Editors' note: On March 9, 2015 at 7:12 GMT, the Solar Impulse 2 took flight in Abu Dhabi, embarking on the first leg of its fuelless round-the-world trip.
If, one day, you find yourself driving an electric car that recharges its featherweight high-capacity lithium batteries with sunlight collected from super-efficient solar cells covering its carbon-composite body, you'll have Solar Impulse 2 to thank. It's a plane powered by nothing but sunlight, and this March, Bertrand Piccard and his copilot, engineer André Borschberg, will take it on a 12-leg, multiweek flight around the world. The point, Piccard says, isn't to start selling solar-powered planes—he just wants to show what might be possible. “When the Apollo astronauts went to the moon, it wasn't to launch tourism on the moon and open hotels and make money,” he says. “It was to inspire the world.”
