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Solar Impulse grounded until 2016
The Swiss team trying to fly a solar-powered plane around the world has abandoned its effort for this year.
Its Solar Impulse vehicle's batteries were damaged on the last leg of the journey from Japan to Hawaii and will take several months to repair.
The aircraft will be kept at its Pacific stop-over at Kalaeloa airport while the maintenance is undertaken.
Once the work is done there will be some test flights before the global quest resumes in 2016, the team says.
That is likely to be in April, and would see Solar Impulse fly from Hawaii to the West Coast of the US.
It should then have a sizeable weather window to try to cross America, the Atlantic, and make its way back to Abu Dhabi, UAE, where the circumnavigation began in March this year.
The suspension will be a disappointment but the project has already met a number of its key objectives.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... 16-414672/
Bad news turned worse for the Solar Impulse round-the-world flight attempt as estimates of the time needed to repair “irreversible” battery damage caused by overheating jumped from “two to three weeks” to “several months” – leaving the all-solar aircraft grounded in Hawaii until spring 2016.
While Solar Impulse 2 smashed all solar-powered crewed flight endurance records on its five-day/five-night leg from Nagoya to Hawaii, the effort overcooked its batteries.