Solar Aircraft
A Revolution in Aviation and Energy
Our precious planet soaks in the sun’s rays every day, absorbing vast amounts of energy — approximately 885 million terawatt-hours every year. Apart from utilizing this clean and renewable source of power in various industries, aeronautical engineers have also been trying to harvest this cleaner alternative to create aircraft that can fly without any fossil fuels. One good example of this revolution is Solar Impulse, the world’s first solar airplane that remained airborne more than any jet plane in history.
Solar Impulse is the story of two men, Bertrand Piccard, psychiatrist, explorer, and aeronaut, and Andre Borschberg, engineer, entrepreneur, and pilot. With a team driven by a vision of the future and a passion for innovation, these two made the first airplane with perpetual endurance that was able to fly day and night without fuel. They set out to show the world the power of pioneering spirit and clean technologies and bring solutions for a better world. Solar Impulse was the adventure that proved change is possible.
Their first solar airplane took off from the United Arab Emirates for its round-the-world journey on March 9, 2015. Between March and July 2015, Piccard and Borschberg flew without a drop of fuel from Abu Dhabi to Oman, and then across the sea to India, Myanmar, China, Japan, and over the Pacific to Hawaii. Resuming the round-the-would adventure in April 2016, Solar Impulse continued flying from Hawaii to California and New York, across the Atlantic to Spain. Egypt, and made it back successfully to Abu Dhabi in July 2016.
Today, the challenge is no longer to conquer the moon but to improve the quality of life here. Our world is in desperate need of the implementation of clean technologies to reduce energy consumption and to be able to preserve natural resources. Solar Impulse was not built to carry passengers but to carry a message. The world could reduce half of its CO2 emission by replacing old polluting devices with new clean technologies, just like the ones that were used to build Solar Impulse.
Solar Impulse was a phenomenon that inspired generations, promoted innovative solutions to our global problems and challenges. After landing in Abu Dhabi in 2016, Piccard and Borschberg said that more than an achievement in the history of aviation, Solar Impulse was an achievement in the history of energy which was completely true. With Solar Impulse, the clean-tech revolution also took off, presenting new ways of thinking and doing to achieve the impossible.
Today, many different companies are trying to continue this initiative and even take it to another level. Airbus is advancing solar cell technology o enable unmanned aerial vehicles that can stay aloft in the stratosphere for extended periods of time, using only sunlight as energy. This flagship, which in fact is a pseudo-satellite, is called Zephyr. This program at Airbus is focused on three major areas:
1. Developing advanced photovoltaic solar panels that are lighter, more flexible, and are capable of capturing more energy from the sun per m2 of surface,
2. Converting the captured solar energy into electrical energy to power an electric propulsion system and other onboard equipment,
3. Harnessing solar energy into a rechargeable energy storage system will enable the aircraft to fly at night with unlimited autonomy.
The project was successfully launched in 2018, and ever since, engineers have been trying to add to its capabilities to cater to more fields. The core markets for Zephyr and similar projects to this seem to be in the military, advertisement, and governmental institutions. Border protection, wildfire monitoring, and high-resolution typography are said to be Zephyr’s top applications, among other usages in other fields, of course.
What one day seemed to be impossible has advanced so much that now we have aircraft that can fly around the globe, even without a pilot, for days and months on end, without a single drop of fuel.
