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Solar plane ready for round-the-world flight

Xinhua, January 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, the Swiss co-founders and pilots of Solar Impulse 2 (Si2), announced here on Tuesday they will start their first solar-powered round-the-world flight in six weeks.

The solar-powered aircraft will take off in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), at the end of February 2015 or the beginning of March.

The plane will then head to Muscat, Oman, from where it will stop in Ahmedabad and Varanasi, India, then to Mandalay in Myanmar, from where Si2 will head to China and make planned stops in Chongqing and the coastal city of Nanjing.

The aircraft's batteries will be charged solely by solar panels which are attached on the plane's wings with a spread length of 72 meters.

The project was initiated in 1999, and the first test flights during day and night were done in 2010. Endit