The Solar Impulse 2 trip around the world

[sn26567]

André Borschberg is in his final night. His state of mind is great. 96% of the eighth flight from Nagoya to Hawaii is completed!

Si2 enters a holding pattern before landing to allow him to rest and to avoid the strong winds at night.

ETA 1600 UTC

[Homo Aeroportus]

André Borschberg said during an interview that indeed he prefers to recharge his own batteries during the night. Flying at lower altitude hence without his oxygen mask.
Landing is a demanding effort that he prefers to perform in daylight.

It is also very appropriate for a solar plane to land at sunrise

Currently the landing is planned at 06:00lt, 1600 UTC or 18:00 Brussels time.
Sunrises at 05:53lt, with civil twilight starting at 05:29.

QFU will be determined later, probably on RWY 04 with 4kts headwind.

A live show will be broadcast on http://www.solarimpulse.com, also on Youtube.

H.A.

[Homo Aeroportus]

Live show will start at 1230UTC, 14:30 Brussels time.

H.A.

[Homo Aeroportus]

All looks good for a landing in a bit more than 2 hours from now.

Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay, visited the MCC and did good PR. Reminding that Solvay was a partner from the very beginning some 10 years ago when Solar Impulse was more some kind of a dream. He listed the areas in which Solvay assisted the project e.g. lightweight materials, high density batteries and so on, perfectly in line with the company motto : Asking more from chemistry.

Wx is fine with Luc Trullemans, the Belgian meteorologist, having spotted a lone CB but with no real interference with the flight path.

Latest METAR/TAF : http://en.allmetsat.com/metar-taf/hawaii.php?icao=PHJR

A helicopter will reach Solar Impulse for some photo shooting prior to the landing, but at the moment (04:00 local) it is more Lunar Impulse that is flying under the full moon light.

Landing will be at PHJR – JRF which is only 7NM from PHNL – HLL Honolulu Int’l Airport, and aligned with its main runway, but traffic will be very light at both airports around sunrise.

A flight from Mokulele Airlines is planned though to depart from JRF just after landing of SI2 but I’m sure the passengers won’t mind a few minutes delay if necessary.
If it takes off before SI2 lands, the risk of wake turbulence is limited.

Mokulele Airlines.jpg (8.15 KiB) Viewed 7400 times

Enjoy the show !

H.A.

[sn26567]

Very emotional (when I was watching it live) and perfect landing of Si2 on runway 4R of Kalaeloa Airport in Hawaii after 4 days and 21 hours solo flying of André Borschberg.

Congratulations!

[convair]

Fantastic performance! Congratulations!

[sn26567]

Si2 is now under the Hangar 111 in Kalaeloa with the Solar Team performing maintenance work.

Waiting for flight #9...

[sn26567]

No Si2 flight before August

Following the record-breaking oceanic flight of 5 days and 5 nights (117 hours and 52 minutes) in a solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse will undergo maintenance repairs on the batteries due to damages brought about by overheating.

Despite having completed the longest and most difficult leg of the Round the World Solar Flight, Si2 has suffered battery damages due to overheating.

During the first ascent on day one of the flight from Nagoya to Hawaii, the battery temperature increased too much due to over insulation. And while the Mission Team was monitoring this very closely during the mission leg, there was no way to decrease the temperature for the remaining duration of the flight as each daily cycle requires an ascend to 28’000 feet and descend for energy management issues.

The damage to certain parts of the batteries is irreversible and will require repairs and replacements that will take several weeks to work through. In parallel, the Solar Impulse engineering team is looking at various options for better management of the cooling and heating process for very long flights. Solar Impulse does not see the possibility for any flights before 2-3 weeks at the earliest.

[Homo Aeroportus]

Latest from Solar Impulse :

IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO OVERHEATED BATTERIES IN SI2 PUSHES THE SECOND HALF OF ROUND-THE-WORLD SOLAR FLIGHT TO EARLY SPRING 2016.

Despite the hard work of the team to repair the batteries which overheated in the record breaking oceanic flight from Nagoya to Hawaii, Si2 will stay in Hawaii until early Spring 2016.

Too bad but this is part of the adventure.

H.A.

[sn26567]

That means one year delay to the initial schedule. The aircraft can indeed only fly when the days are long enough for the sun to supply enough energy into the batteries for the night. A real pity !

On a more personal note, when I worked for the main Solar Impulse sponsor, Solvay, I participated in the development of the engineering polymer that is used as a support for the electrolyte in the lithium-ion batteries. This polymer is absolutely not the cause of the problems, since it can resist to temperatures up to 150-160 °C. The fact that the batteries were overheated must have damaged (and not destroyed, otherwise the Si2 would have plunged into the ocean) another essential component which is less heat-resistant. I am curious to know what really happened.

[airazurxtror]

The batteries were “too insulated” and the plane’s ascent was made too fast, which combined to overheat the battery. “We have nobody who can tell us how to do it – there is no benchmark,” says Piccard. “This is exploration.”
New batteries have been ordered and will be tested in a decompression chamber in Zurich. The plane is now under 24-hour guard, wrapped in a space blanket, in the University of Hawaii’s massive hangar.

When we speak, Piccard has just returned to Switzerland to raise some money. “It is about €20m (£14m) that I need to find,” he says. This year, 150 people were involved in the project, and he says it has cost about €150m since 2003, funded by corporate sponsors, individuals and more than €5m (£3.5m) from the Swiss government. “Projects like this, everything is expensive,” he says, while noting that his budget is only about 4% of what a Formula 1 team spends. “I believe that the success of the first part of the project was so big that [the funds] will not be too difficult to find,” he says.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... lion-euros

[sn26567]

Piccard has just returned to Switzerland to raise some money.

And he'll for sure come to Belgium too, where a company that we both know well will be more than happy to contribute

[sn26567]

2015 Achievements - RTW STATUS

Setbacks are part of the challenges of a project which is pushing technological boundaries to the limits, and Solar Impulse will attempt to complete its Round-The-World in 2016.

But what are the key numbers of the first part of the epic journey?

• 8 legs
• 7 countries
• 255 flight hours
• 20,000 kilometers
• 10 FAI World Records

Thanks to the great support of the University of Hawaii along with the cooperation of the Department of Transportation, Si2 is safely sheltered in its hangar at Kalaeloa airport until the mission resumes with the flight to the USA West Coast.

[sn26567]

Cool New Batteries for Solar Impulse

After several months of designing and testing, it’s now time to get Solar Impulse back on its feet! And to avoid the batteries overheating again, our engineers have upgraded the whole battery system and integrated a cooling system. Take a look at how and when the repair work will take place to get the plane ready for part 2 of the round the world tour.

As you may have heard, Solar Impulse has been hangared in Hawaii since July – not the worst place to be stranded we reckon – because its batteries overheated during the 5-day and night record breaking flight from Nagoya, Japan. Since the plane had been exposed to harsh weather conditions from Nanjing to Nagoya, we decided to do a test flight before leaving for Hawaii. Having to perform a test flight followed by a mission flight had not been taken into account in the design process of the battery system, which did not allow the batteries to cool down in between the two.


Technicians carrying out maintenance work on the batteries in Hawaii in July

But the show must go on, and for the plane to be back in the air by April 2016, our technical team still has a lot on its plate. Why wait until spring? Because the days are longer, which means more daylight hours to recharge the batteries during flight periods.

Let’s remember that we are at the limits of technology: each morning the charge goes down to 10% of battery capacity.

Imagine how you feel when you realize that the battery level of your cell phone is red and that you only have a few minutes left before it shuts down! The first batch of upgraded elements, five in total (four to replace the plane’s damaged ones, and one for testing), is currently under construction. The second one, the four spare parts, will be hatched beginning of 2016.

Let’s take a look at the planning concerning the first round. The three types of elements are designed separately and then mounted together before being integrated into the aircraft.



1. The key components, the batteries, have been produced by our supplier Kokam, and are now on their way to Germany to be tested, assembled, and placed in their boxes. They are similar to the former ones.


Battery dummy cells made out of aluminium sheet metal for thermal tests

2. In parallel, the battery containers, are being built and undergoing shock testing in Dübendorf, Switzerland. They will be ready at the end of November, and the batteries will thus be encapsulated in December. Like the previous ones, they contain silver (a good electrical conductor), but the novelty lies in a fail-safe system which should safeguard us from anymore temperature-related glitches in case we have to follow a different mission profile than the one foreseen. It can be controlled from the cockpit and includes a cooling and backup system. In case the cooling system breaks down, the backup one steps in and allows the pilot to control the opening so that it doesn’t stay completely open, which would cause freezing, or closed, leading to another overheating scenario. Indeed, this could jeopardise the continuation of the flight which would be critical if the airplane was flying over an ocean.


Structural load test of the new battery box: 1000 kg towards the ground, 370 kg to the side

3. The last level is the engine housing (or gondola), which shelters both battery and engine, seeing as the former powers the latter at night. A few adjustments concerning the electronics have been made and an air vent has been added to let air flow into the battery’s cooling system. The gondolas are also currently being pieced together in Dübendorf, by our hard working engineers and technicians.


Air inlet on gondola front part for the new battery cooling system

We’ll keep you posted as we make progress first in Europe and then in Hawaii, to prepare for this second part of the round the world tour!

[sn26567]

The goal for 2016 is finish the Round-The-World tour started in March 2015. Test flights will begin in Hawaii in February, before the plane is ready to take off at the end of April.

And from there? Solar Impulse 2 will cross the rest of the Pacific, the United States, the Atlantic, Europe, before landing in Abu Dhabi, the host city. Due to the increasingly unpredictable weather, there will be a lot of improvisation along the way, but that’s also what will make the adventure so stimulating!

[sn26567]

Test flights have resumed in Hawaii. Departure from Hawaii to the continental US foreseen in April.

[sn26567]

Test flights have resumed in Hawaii.

First training flight is a success!

The first Solar Impulse 2 maintenance flight took place on Friday 26 of February was uneventful. The plane took off from Kalaeloa airport at 4:32PM UTC with the new test pilot, Markus Scherdel, in the cockpit, and landed at 6:05PM UTC.

Bertrand Piccard was following this long-awaited flight from the other side of the world and confessed that it was a true relief to see Si2 back in the sky of Hawaii after the last months of uncertainty.

During the hour and a half that it lasted, the team based at the Mission Control Center performed maintenance checks to verify that the technology installed in the aircraft ran smoothly, such as the stabilisation and cooling system, which both performed superbly. Si2 flew up to 8,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean and then returned to the Kalaeloa base.

[sn26567]

The Solar Impulse 2 will fly a 16-hour maintenance flight today in Hawaii. Follow it on Flight Radar 24 : http://www.flightradar24.com/SOLAR2/8fcb3cc

[sn26567]

Second maintenance flight completed

A strong team and favourable weather: the second maintenance flight was successfully completed. After one week since Mission mode has switched on, Si2 has already completed two flights.

The engineers performed a high altitude flight that lasted 16 hours, climbing to a height of 28000 feet, in order to perform operational checks.

[sn26567]

Another successful training flight

Test pilot Markus Scherdel took the controls again for Solar Impulse’s ninth maintenance flight of 2016. Si2 took off from Kalaeloa Airport at 6:26am Hawaiian time on Sunday and was in the air for a grand total of 14 hours and 28 minutes. During that time, Markus climbed to a peak altitude of 20,000 feet and carried out a number of tests. He also had time for a photoshoot and an inflight nap (or at least a chance to lay flat!). Look, no hands!


Coordination between members of the team in Hawaii and Monaco went smoothly, with everyone focusing on fine-tuning in preparation for the ninth leg of the round-the-world solar flights next month. On the ground in Kalaeloa, Bertand Piccard and André Borschberg continue to review procedures and prepare; they’re both due to be back at the controls and in the air in the coming days, weather permitting. They’re never too busy, however, to say hello to visitors!