samedi 6 juin 2015

Solar Impulse pending better skies











SolarImpulse - Around the World patch.

June 6, 2015

Solar Impulse 2 is since Wednesday morning under the shelter of its hangar in Nagoya, where he had to stop Monday night due to bad weather.


Image Above: The Solar Impulse 2 flies over Nagoya Airport in Toyoyama, near Nagoya, central Japan, ict Shortly before landing Monday, June 1, 2015.

Downtime in Japan, where begins the annual rainy season, is unknown. The solar plane "is safe under his mobile hangar. We can now perform maintenance tasks and wait for a new good weather window to steal, "wrote the organizers of the mission on Twitter.

He, they say, took a good ten hours of night work to set up the table, which only arrived on Tuesday evening (local time), together with the logistics team, blocked several hours in Shanghai due to bad weather.


Image above: Solar Impulse 2 is since Wednesday morning under the shelter of its hangar in Nagoya, where he had to stop Monday night due to bad weather.

Solar Impulse 2 is a fragile airplane that does not support the turbulence in the air and is not designed to stay thank you from the wind, heat and rain, even to the ground.

Exposed to rain

It rained in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in Nagoya. This is the first time in its global journey he found himself briefly in a downpour. The aircraft is tight, "but it is more safe in the shelter," acknowledged the team.

This device with wings covered with photovoltaic cells had to interrupt his Pacific crossing between Nanjing and Hawaii to make an unexpected stop in Nagoya on Monday because of deteriorating weather conditions.


Image above: Solar Impulse 2 is since Wednesday morning under the shelter of its hangar in Nagoya.

After arriving in this central region of Japan, "we had to improvise and our team has experienced difficult times," said Tuesday the Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard. "Ten people have been forced to hold the device with their own hands to prevent it from flying itself," he explained.

The take-off speed of the aircraft, "very light and with a vast area of ​​45 km/h, so at the slightest gust of wind, it can be carried away," he said.

Solar Impulse 2 left on March 9 Abu Dhabi to a world tour of 35,000 kilometers, both technological challenge and aviation achievement. He then made a stop in Oman, India, Burma and China.

For more information about Solar Impulse Around the World, visit: http://www.solarimpulse.com/

Images, Text, Credits: SolarImpulse / ATS / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch