A solar powered plane has landed in Arizona, United States, after an 18 hour flight with no fuel.
Christened Solar Impulse, the plane took off from San Francisco, California, at dawn on Friday and landed in Phoenix, Arizona eighteen hours later.
Solar impulse was piloted by Swiss pilots and co-founders Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
The other stopovers will be Dallas, St Louis, New York and Washington DC in the coming weeks. The two will share the role of flying the plane for the rest of the tour.
“We’ve been preparing for this flight since last summer, so we are all very excited,” Borschberg told BBC News.
HB-SIA has the same wingspan as an Airbus A340, but it weighs only 1.6 tonnes and so far it has already made day-and –night flight lasting more than 26 hours. The team hopes to go around the world in 2015.
Solar Impulse spent a number of hours in darkness mainly relying on the energy stored in several lithium-ion batteries to drive its propellers.
During the day the batteries are charged by almost 12,000 solar cells that cover the wings and stabilizer of the craft.
The current HB-SIA is the prototype that will be used for transoceanic flights and the above around the world trip.
It is projected the HB-SIB should be completed by the end of 2013.
