This plane gets its power from the sun

(Image credit: Jean Revillard/Associated Press)

published 11 June 2016

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.

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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.