Solar Impulse 2 takes off from California, starts solar-powered trek across US

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3. Solar-powered plane lands in Arizona on round-the-world flight

Source: Reuters

Technology | Tue May 3, 2016 1:12am EDT

Solar-powered plane lands in Arizona on round-the-world flight

LOS ANGELES | BY STEVE GORMAN

A solar-powered airplane midway through a historic bid to circle the globe completed the tenth leg of its journey on Monday, landing in Arizona after a 16-hour flight from California, the project team said.

The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015.

The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived in Phoenix shortly before 9 p.m., following a flight from San Francisco that took it over the Mojave Desert.

The flight would have taken a conventional airplane just two hours, but the solar craft's cruising speed, akin to that of a car, required pilots to take up meditation and hypnosis in training to stay alert for long periods.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-plane-idUSKCN0XT1N5