This plane gets its power from the sun
A solar-powered plane which is circumnavigating the earth landed in New York City Saturday after flying across the United States.
The Solar Impulse 2 (Si2), made in Switzerland, has been on its global journey for more than a year, including nine months in Japan for battery repair. Its flight across America began in late April, and ideal flight speed is just 28 mph — the final leg from an airport north of Philadelphia into NYC took nearly five hours — though top speed in the midday sun is roughly double that.
The Si2 seats two pilots in a small cabin, but its wings, covered with 17,000 solar panels, are wider than those of a Boeing 747. The project's aim is to "demonstrate that clean technologies can achieve impossible goals." The next step: crossing the Atlantic, which at 28 mph would take more than five days.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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