Adventurer targets world’s first sun-powered flight

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled on Friday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources. The prototype, HB-SIA, has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs only as much as an average family car.

The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving surplus energy from its 24,000 solar cells in high-performance batteries.

“Yesterday it was a dream. Today it is a plane. Tomorrow it will be an ambassador of renewable energy,” Piccard told a news conference. “If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems and computers,” Piccard said.

Piccard, who made history in 1999 by flying round the world non-stop in a hot-air balloon, hopes the prototype will make its first test flights later this year before a first complete night flight in 2010 over Switzerland.

The launch came after six years’ work by 50 engineers and technicians on the so-called Solar Impulse, which has a number of high profile backers including Deutsche Bank, watchmaker Omega and Swiss chemicals maker Solvayand a budget of $97.53 million. The plane combines innovative aerodynamic features, novel light-weight materials strong enough to resist pressures at high altitude and solar technology.

A planned successor, HB-SIB, will likely be even bigger, enabling Piccard and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg to fly around the world along a path similar to the one he took in his Orbiter 3 balloon a decade ago.

HB-SIB will first fly across the Atlantic and the US and is projected to start in 2012. The pilots will spend 36-hours in the plane’s one-man cockpit and fuselage in initial flights to test its ability to fly overnight.