[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Güneş enerjisiyle çalışan uçak dünyayı gezecek Dünyanın ilk güneş enerjisiyle çalışan uçağının 2011′de dünya turuna çıkacağı, projenin sponsorları tarafından Çin’de açıklanmıştı.
8 ay gibi bir süre sonra uçak test uçuşunu gerçekleştirdi.
Proje yöneticileri 7 yılllık çalışmalarından sonra güzel bir an olduğunu ifade ettiler.
Uçak 4 elektrik motoruna sahip olup, kanatları tamamında güneş panelleri ile kaplı.
Uçak çarşamba günü İsviçre semalarında 1200 metre(4000ft) yükseklikte 1,5 saat kadar uçtu.
Solar impulse web site
Videoyu izlemek için tıklayın(click to see video).
A prototype solar-powered plane has made its first full test flight – coming closer to the goal of using solar energy to fly around the world.
The Solar Impulse, with a wingspan similar to that of a super-jumbo jet but weighing the same as a saloon car, took off from a Swiss airfield.
The plane’s wings are covered by solar cells which power four electric motors.
Its designers hope a slightly larger production model will circumnavigate the globe in two years’ time.
The test flight was intended to verify that the plane’s behaviour tallied with simulations.
“With such a large and light plane never having flown before, the aircraft’s flight behaviour remains unexplored,” the flight team said in a statement.
Round-the-world balloonist Bertrand Piccard is leading the project and intends to pilot the plane along with co-founder Andre Borschberg.
“It’s a very important moment after seven years of work,” said Mr Borschberg before the take-off.
Witnesses said both take-off and landing seemed to go smoothly.
The flight team have been conducting flea-hop tests since December, taking the plane no higher than 60cm (2ft) in altitude and 300m in distance.
A night flight is planned later this year, and then a new plane will be built based on the results of those tests.
The big take-off is planned for 2012, when the two pilots will try a transatlantic flight before attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
Solar Impulse takes flight towards the impossible
By Paul Betts and Michiyo Nakamoto
Published: April 8 2010 19:32 | Last updated: April 8 2010 19:32
On its website, Solar Impulse quotes Jules Verne, the French author of Around the World in 80 Days who said that “All that is impossible remains to be achieved”. For the past seven years, the Swiss scientific venture has been developing a prototype of an aircraft designed to show that it is not impossible to fly around the world using only solar power.
This week, the airplane with the wingspan of a jumbo jet but the weight of a small saloon car completed its first serious test flight. In December, the aircraft had made what its inventors described as a “flea hop” when it lifted barely 3ft off the ground and flew for less than a quarter of a mile. On Wednesday, it flew for one and a half hours at an altitude of almost 4,000ft above the Swiss countryside.
At a time when the aerospace industry is struggling to recover from its latest cyclical crisis, this novel solar-powered aircraft’s first extended flight has demonstrated that the pioneering spirit in aviation is still alive. The €70m ($94m) project is the brainchild of Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss explorer who made the headlines in 1999 by completing the first non-stop round the world balloon flight, and his partner André Borschberg, an engineer and fighter aircraft pilot.
It has attracted considerable interest and support from institutions such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as well as several leading European blue-chip companies. These include the Belgian Solvay chemicals group, Omega, Deutsche Bank, Bayer’s Material Science subsidiary, the Altran high-tech consultancy and France’s Dassault Aviation, which is the aircraft’s design and production consultant.
The next phase of the venture – set for later this year – is to test the aircraft’s ability to fly at night using lithium battery power before embarking on an around-the-world flight in two years’ time. The ultimate aim is to show that zero-emission solar-powered flight is technically possible, even though its commercial viability is questionable.
After all, the current prototype can accommodate no passengers and is hardly likely to break any records flying at about 40mph. It also requires clear skies to feed its 12,000 solar cells, not to mention a lack of strong winds.
At this stage, the idea of developing a fleet of solar-powered aircraft for commercial airline service is the last thing in the mind of the project’s managers and their sponsors. The fundamental idea of this “scientific adventure”, as Mr Piccard calls it, is not only to show that solar-powered aircraft can fly day and night, but to demonstrate the huge potential of renewable energies and energy saving technologies. The project is also expected to help provide solutions for the aerospace industry in developing and using ultra-lightweight materials and optimising electric components to use as little power as possible.
When IATA joined the Solar Impulse project, Giovanni Bisignani, director general, suggested that solar power would be one of the building blocks – together with new fuel cell technology and fuel made from biomass – that would eventually help the aviation industry to eliminate all emissions. Solar Impulse, he added, was proof that with vision anything is possible. Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes would have loved it.]