An experimental airplane powered solely by energy from the sun landed in Ohio on Saturday night on the latest leg of its historic bid by pilots and developers to fly around the globe without a drop of fuel.
The single-seat Solar Impulse 2 aircraft arrived in Dayton shortly before 10pm, about 17 hours after leaving Phoenix Goodyear Airport, the project team said on its official Twitter page.
“People told the WrightBrothers & us what we wanted to achieve was impossible,” Bertrand Piccard said after landing. “They were wrong!”
The locale was of special significance to the pilots, as the home base to aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Amanda Wright Lane, a descendant of the brothers, neither of whom ever married, was on hand to welcome the flight.
With a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747, but an ultra-light carbon-fiber skin and overall weight of a car, the Solar Impulse cruises at speeds ranging from only 55kph to 100kph.
The four engines of the propeller-driven aircraft are powered exclusively by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells built into its wings.
Excess energy is stored in four batteries during daylight hours to keep the plane flying after dark.
Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns piloting the plane on each leg of the journey.
Borschberg set a new endurance record for the longest non-stop solo flight in July last year during a 118-hour trans-Pacific crossing, over five days and five nights, from Japan to Hawaii. He also set new duration and distance records for solar-powered flight.
Battery damage sustained during the crossing kept the aircraft grounded for nine months.
The Swiss team’s ultimate goal is to achieve the first round-the-world solar-powered flight.
The team hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, the starting point for the journey in March last year.
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia