Solar Impulse plane heading for New York City
The sun-powered Solar Impulse 2 plane is slated for an early Saturday flight from Allentown, Pa., to New York City, its final U.S. destination on its around-the-world journey.
The aircraft is scheduled to take off from Allentown's Lehigh Valley International Airport at midnight and land at JFK International Airport around 4 a.m. Saturday.
Before landing, the plane will fly around the Statue of Liberty from 2 to 3:15 a.m. It will enter New York Bay over the Verrazano Bridge at an altitude of 1,500 feet. A press conference is scheduled at JFK at 9 a.m. Saturday to welcome the aircraft and pilots.
Pilots and Swiss adventurers André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard set out to circumnavigate the globe last year in the plane without using fuel or spewing polluting emissions.
The two pilots alternate legs of the journey. Borschberg will pilot the Allentown to New York City trip.
The plane already traveled from San Francisco to Phoenix, Phoenix to Tulsa, Tulsa to Dayton, and Dayton to Allentown.
The first leg of the around-the-world tour began in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi. It continued with several more flights across Asia before Borschberg completed the world's longest non-stop solo flight, a four-day, 21-hour and 52-minute excursion from Japan to Hawaii.
But that record-breaking flight damaged the plane's battery. Because of the time needed to repair it and the decreasing sunlight as a result of the changing seasons, the pilots called off their attempt to complete the trip in a single year.
The plane took off again in late April from Hawaii to San Francisco. After leaving New York City, it's scheduled to undertake two final legs over the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea before landing back in Abu Dhabi.
Piccard will pilot the next flight across the Atlantic.
In addition to aviation records, the pilots also want to raise awareness about climate change, showcasing what can be done using nothing but renewable energy.
"The most important thing isn't to make world records," Piccard said last year. "It's to show what we can do with clean technologies," he said, ones that could simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide emissions and stimulate economic growth.
Theoretically, Solar Impulse 2 could fly forever under sunny skies and is only limited by the pilot’s endurance.