Solar-powered plane makes successful first flight

Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss adventurer who designed the Solar Impulse, said he hoped one day to fly nonstop around the world in the giant aeroplane.

The short, low altitude flight at a Swiss airfield on Thursday proved the prototype can fly, said Mr Piccard, who was the pilot of the first hot-air balloon to fly nonstop around the world. Several aircraft have flown with pilots using solar power before, but Solar Impulse is the first designed to fly indefinitely, staying aloft at night using batteries charged by the sun during the day.

"It was absolutely great to see this plane in the air," Mr Piccard told The Associated Press. "It's a completely new flight domain. There has never been an aeroplane so big and so light flying with so little energy."

The Solar Impulse, which has a wingspan of a Boeing 747 but weighs less than a small car, flew 1,150 feet at just one meter above the ground, Mr Piccard said.

"The goal was not to make a big flight, but to see if this aeroplane is behaving the way the engineers designed it," he said. "And the result was excellent.

"On the other hand, we see how long the road is still before we fly around the world with it," Mr Piccard said.

Solar panels will be attached next year for the first flight at night powered by solar energy, followed by a series of other tests, he said.

Mr Piccard and his co-pilot Andre Borschberg will alternate in the cockpit when they try to take the aeroplane around the world in 2012.

Mr Piccard set a world record in 1999 when he and Brian Jones, a Briton, took their balloon, Breitling Orbiter III, on a 20-day circumnavigation of the globe - an achievement that had eluded many before them, including Steve Fossett and Richard Branson.