The Solar Impulse 2 airplane is finishing up more than seven weeks of flying across America with an overnight hop to New York City that sets the stage for a climactic Atlantic crossing.

Solar Impulse co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg took off from Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania at about 11:20 p.m. ET (8:20 p.m. PT) today. The timing was dictated by the weather as well as the logistics required to get the airplane through the East Coast’s normally crowded airspace during the middle of the night.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Lady Liberty,” Borschberg said after takeoff.

Borschberg is expected to take only a couple of hours to travel less than 100 miles from Lehigh Valley to New York, and then do a series of photo ops over New York landmarks. A Statue of Liberty flyover is planned for 2 a.m. ET Saturday (11 p.m. PT Friday), and landing is set for 4 a.m. ET (1 a.m. PT) at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The New York experience marks a high point for the Swiss-led Solar Impulse venture. “Bringing the solar airplane to the city that never sleeps is symbolic. … Both New York City and Solar Impulse share a pioneering spirit in the face of clean technology,” the team said in a pre-takeoff blog posting.

Borschberg and the plane’s other co-founder and pilot, Swiss psychiatrist/adventurer Bertrand Piccard, have been preaching the gospel of clean technology at every stop in their round-the-world odyssey. Demonstrating environmentally friendly flight is the main point behind the $ 150 milllion effort, which is funded by corporate sponsors.

Thanks to ultra-lightweight composite building materials, the single-pilot airplane has a wingspan that’s wider than a Boeing 747 jet (236 feet), but weighs only about as much as a sport utility vehicle (5,000 pounds). In sunny weather, more than 17,000 solar cells feed enough electricity to the batteries to keep Solar Impulse’s four scooter-type electric motors running day and night.

The tradeoff for flying without fuel has to do with speed: Solar Impulse 2 typically flies about 40 mph, and its maximum speed is 90 mph. For that reason, each leg of the journey has to be carefully planned out.

The same team made a months-long trip across America in 2013 using a smaller, less powerful plane. That set the stage for Piccard and Borschberg to begin their round-the-world odyssey in March 2015. They set out from Abu Dhabi and made stopovers in Oman, India, Myanmar, China and Japan.

Last July, Borschberg made a record-setting, five-day trip across the western Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, but the batteries overheated during flight. As a result, the journey had to be suspended while the team made repairs and waited for favorable weather. This April, Solar Impulse 2 picked up where it left off, in Hawaii, and made a 2.5-day flight across the eastern Pacific to California. Further stopovers brought the plane to Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Solar Impulse team is expected to spend at least a few days hobnobbing in New York, and then Piccard will make the Atlantic Ocean crossing to Europe. If all goes well, the plane could return to Abu Dhabi and complete the 22,000-mile circuit by the end of July.

GeekWire

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