Sunday, December 21, 2025
ADVT 
National

Good Weather And Some Luck Could Bring A Record-Shattering Solar Impulse 2 Aircraft To Vancouver

Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 14 Apr, 2016 01:12 PM
    Vancouver is one of four locations being considered as the North American West Coast destination for a history-making flight.
     
    Scientists and pilots linked to the round-the-world flight of a solar-powered airplane are expected to decide the destination in the next month as they await a favourable weather window.
     
    West Coast destinations, including Phoenix, the San Francisco area and Los Angeles, have been selected to allow maximum flexibility for route planning and weather conditions.
     
    The Solar Impulse 2 is able to fly day and night without fuel and has completed one jump across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Hawaii on its way across North America and Europe to Abu Dhabi.
     
     
    But a news release from the programs co-founders says the 117-hour, 52-minute non-stop 8,900-kilometre flight last July overheated the batteries and the plane has been grounded in Hawaii since then, completing repairs and test flights.
     
    The single-seat, carbon fibre Solar Impulse 2 weighs little more than a small car and has more than 17,000 solar cells built into its nearly 72-metre wingspan, providing renewable energy for four electric engines.
     
    "An airplane with perpetual flight endurance, without fuel, like the Solar Impulse, is not only a first in the history of aviation, but also in the history of energy," Bertrand Piccard, the project's chairman, said in the release.
     
    "The primary purpose of this adventure is to demonstrate that modern clean technologies can achieve the impossible and encourage everyone to use these same energy efficient solutions on the ground in their daily lives for mobility, construction, lighting, heating, cooling and more."

    MORE National ARTICLES

    Dead Killer Whale Calf Found Floating Near Sooke, B.C.

    The federal fisheries department received reports Thursday about a whale's body floating near the Vancouver Island community.

    Dead Killer Whale Calf Found Floating Near Sooke, B.C.

    Feds To Address Medicinal-marijuana Regulations By August: Health Minister Jane Philpott

    Feds To Address Medicinal-marijuana Regulations By August: Health Minister Jane Philpott
    A Supreme Court decision in February called the ban unconstitutional and gave the government six months to rewrite the law.

    Feds To Address Medicinal-marijuana Regulations By August: Health Minister Jane Philpott

    Prominent Canadian Diving Coach Gets Conditional Sentence For Sex Offences Against Minor

    Prominent Canadian Diving Coach Gets Conditional Sentence For Sex Offences Against Minor
    Forty-six-year-old Trevor Palmatier was convicted last year of three charges, including sexual touching a young person and buying sex from a young person

    Prominent Canadian Diving Coach Gets Conditional Sentence For Sex Offences Against Minor

    B.C. Woman Is Killed In Chain-Reaction Crash On Highway 7 Where Truck Dumps Its Load

    B.C. Woman Is Killed In Chain-Reaction Crash On Highway 7 Where Truck Dumps Its Load
    RCMP say a car driven by a 31-year-old man from Agassiz collided with a commercial truck carrying a load of particle board, causing the truck to tip.

    B.C. Woman Is Killed In Chain-Reaction Crash On Highway 7 Where Truck Dumps Its Load

    Growing B.C. Economy Leaves Room For Higher Hike To Minimum Wage: Jobs Minister Shirley Bond

    Growing B.C. Economy Leaves Room For Higher Hike To Minimum Wage: Jobs Minister Shirley Bond
    The current minimum wage is $10.45 per hour, the second lowest in the country behind $10.30 in New Brunswick.

    Growing B.C. Economy Leaves Room For Higher Hike To Minimum Wage: Jobs Minister Shirley Bond

    Finance Minister Bill Morneau Says Review Of Federal Tax Breaks Is Coming

    Morneau's big-spending, big-borrowing blueprint has fiscal hawks complaining that spiralling debt, increased taxes or both will be the inevitable outcome of projected deficits in the $100-billion range over the next four years.

    Finance Minister Bill Morneau Says Review Of Federal Tax Breaks Is Coming