After being forced to abort its first attempted flight from Brussels to Paris Le Bourget, Solar Impulse has cheated a bit on the second by using electricity rather than the sun to complete the charging of its prototype aircraft's batteries ahead of take-off.
For the full story on the latest attempt to get to Le Bourget in time for #PAS11, see here. The article includes live video of the latest attempt to fly to Paris on solar power.
Rather than risking cloudy weather conditions once again thwarting the mission by preventing the sun from charging up the aircraft's batteries, Solar Impulse used electricity to provide the remaining 40% of battery power that hadn't come from the sun before the prototype took off in the early hours of this morning.
The aircraft is due to land at Le Bourget later this evening. If that happens, watch out for it at the Paris air show where it will hopefully carry out some flight displays without relying on electricity.
Leave a comment