Solar plane goes on maiden intercontinental flight

Solar plane on first intercontinental flight The Swiss-made solar-powered Solar Impulse aircraft took off on Tuesday from the Spanish capital Madrid en route to the Moroccan capital, Rabat, the Solar Impulse team said in a statement. The plane is to land in Rabat after 11 pm local time (11 pm GMT) in what is expected to be the first intercontinental flight from Europe to Africa, performed by a manned solar-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse said on its web site.
Bernard Piccard, a 54-year-old Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist, famous for the world's first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight in 1999, flew for part of the flight along with the plane’s developer, Andre Borschberg.
Organizers said that the 2,500-kilometer trip will mark the launch of construction of the largest solar thermal plant in Morocco’s southern Ouarzazate region.
The trip also precedes the plane's round-the-world flight which is scheduled for 2014, the developers said.
The aircraft, which was unveiled in June 2009, made headlines in July 2010 when it set a record for the longest flight by a manned solar-powered airplane as it hovered above Switzerland for over 26 hours at at altitude of up to 9,235 meters (30,298 feet).
The Solar Impulse aircraft, with a 63.4-meter wingspan, comparable to an Airbus A340, weighs as much as a car, about 1.6 tons. It is powered by four 10-horsepower electric motors that are fueled by the energy produced by 12,000 solar cells on the wings and stored in on-board batteries.
The engineers hope to reduce the weight of the solar cells to allow two pilots on board for a nonstop trip around the world.