Solar-powered plane lands in China on historic round-the-world flight
Swiss pilots land world’s largest solar plane in darkness at Chongqing after 20-hour flight from Burma across mountains
A groundbreaking solar-powered plane successfully flew from Myanmar to central China early on Tuesday as part of an historic round-the-world journey promoting renewable energy use.
The organisers of the Solar Impulse 2 flight wrote in a statement that the plane landed in Chongqing at 1:35am on Tuesday, after leaving Mandalay, Myanmar, more than 20 hours earlier.
Two Swiss pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, are flying the state-of-the-art plane, which is powered by more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings. They are attempting the first ever round-the-world flight by a completely solar-powered plane.
The statement said the pilots had to make a steep climb to cross mountainous terrain in southern China. The pilots wore oxygen masks in the unpressurized cockpit, where temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius.
The Solar Impulse 2 started its journey from Abu Dhabi on March 9 and made four stops before arriving in China. It flies next to Nanjing, in Jiangsu province, before heading to Hawaii on its five-month trip.