The Solar Impulse 2 returned to the skies on Friday evening for a successful test flight in Hawaii, after being grounded there for repairs for seven months.
If the rest of its journey goes as planned, the solar-powered aeroplane - which can stay in the air for up to six days and six nights at a time - will soon be the first to complete a round-the-world trip, in a demonstrative feat for renewable energy in the aviation industry.
Flown in turns by Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andr'e Borschberg, the Solar Impulse 2 took off from Abu Dhabi, UAE, on 9 March 2015. It stopped over in Muscat, Oman; Ahmedabad, India; Varanasi, India; Mandalay, Myanmar; Chongqing, China; Nanjing, China; and Nagoya, Japan; before embarking across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii on 28 June 2015.
After completing the first ever oceanic crossing by a solar aeroplane on 3 July, however, the Solar Impulse 2 was grounded in Hawaii for serious repairs. The plane's batteries were severely damaged during the almost-five-day flight, as they had overheated in flight and there had been no way for the pilots to lower their temperature while the plane was in the air.
Over the seven months during which the plane was grounded, the Solar Impulse 2 has been fitted with new batteries and stabilisation and cooling systems, equipping it for the next several legs of its journey back (around the other side of the globe this time) to Abu Dhabi.
Friday evening's 93-minute maintenance flight, which allowed technicians to run checks on the new stabilisation and cooling systems, was "uneventful", and the new systems performed "superbly," the team said.
Specific dates and stop-over locations dependent on weather and other conditions, the Solar Impulse 2 will, if all goes as planned, depart from Hawaii to Phoenix, US at the end of April and stop over in the middle of the US, New York, and Southwest Europe or Northern Africa, before returning to Abu Dhabi to complete its historic journey.
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