Fuel-free plane Solar Impulse departs Myanmar for China

The fuel-free plane, Solar Impulse, had departed Myanmar for China, on the fifth leg of its round-the-world flight.

With Bertrand Piccard at the controls, the plane took off from Mandalay in just after 21:00 GMT on Sunday, and is now heading for Chongqing, where after making a brief stop, it'll try to reach Nanjing, the BBC reported.

Leg five involves a travel of long distance about 1,375km, which might take around 19 hours.

The Swiss-based project is aimed to complete the circumnavigation of the globe in a total of 12 legs, with a return to the Emirate in a few months time.

Solar Impulse has already set two world records for manned solar-powered flight, as no solar-powered plane has ever flown around the world, with the first longest distance covered on a single journey being of 1,468km between Muscat, Oman, and Ahmedabad, India.

The second was for a groundspeed of 117 knots (216km/h; 135mph), which was achieved during the leg into Mandalay, Myanmar, from Varanasi, India.

The plane has a wingspan of 72m, which is bigger than that of a 747 jumbo jet airliner, however, it weighs 2.3 merely tonnes. Its four propellers are dependent on the electricity from 17,000 solar cells that line the top of the wings.

During the night, it runs on the excess energy generated and stored during the day in lithium-ion batteries.