Swiss team builds solar-powered plane
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PrintSwiss team builds solar-powered plane
By Robert Clark | Dec 30, 2009
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A Swiss team has built a prototype of a solar-powered plane and says it is on track to fly around the world in 2012.
The prototype of the plane, the HB-SIA, successfully completed its runway test in Zurich in early December, scmp.com reports. The aircraft flew about 350 metres at an altitude of one meter and is scheduled to make its next test flight in spring.
Bertrand Piccard, the chairman of Solar Impulse and co-founder of the privately funded project, is aiming for the HB-SIA to fly around the globe in 20 days in mid-2012.
He says he came up with the idea after a failed attempt to fly around the world in 2003 because the aircraft ran out of fuel. Piccard, whose grandfather set records as a pioneer balloonist and who also invented a deep-sea submersible, decided to build an aircraft that did not need to carry fuel.
He has raised €40 million ($66m) of the target of €70 million from investors such as Semper, a Geneva private asset management company, as well as Deutsche Bank, Toyota and others.
He is hopeful that Chinese solar energy firm Suntech will provide solar cells to support the project, which he says its aimed at promoting the importance of alternative energy sources.
For the worldwide trip the HB-SIA will need 12,000 solar cells attached to its wings and fuselage, capable of storing energy for at least 14 hours.
The plane has a wingspan as wide as an Airbus 340, although it weighs about the same as a car. It is designed to fly up to a maximum altitude of 8,500 kilometres, with an average speed of 70 km per hour, on the power equivalent of that needed to light up all the bulbs on a large Christmas tree.
