I find it fascinating that the world's longest solo flight was completed aboard a solar powered plane! The 62-year-old Swiss pilot André Borschberg landed in Hawaii a couple of days ago after leaving Nagoya in Japan five days earlier.
The plane uses over 17,000 photo voltaic cells to power it, but it seems like it took a hell of a lot of skill, too. Borschberg had to gain as much altitude as possible during the day, so he could make the distance during the night without losing dangerous amounts of height. While this isn't necessarily representative of the future of aircraft or of sustainable powered flight, the purpose of such a massive endurance test does indeed revolve around the promotion of clean technologies.
The pioneers behind this incredible project, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, are also the founders of the FutureIsClean campaign, which aims to raise awareness of sustainable power and technologies across all areas of the engineering industries. Check it out, and take part.
By coincidence, the successful landing of Solar Impulse 2 is almost 34 years to the day that the first long-distance flight-capable solar powered plane (the Solar Challenger) completed a 163 mile journey from France to England. So it's equally interesting to see that solar powered flight isn't a new concept; it's been making steady progress for over three decades and, evidently, will continue to do so.