Switzerland’s solar powered aircraft, the Solar Impulse, will be making its first cross-continental flight beginning on May 1st of this year, as it flys from San Francisco to Washington, DC and then in New York. The Solar Impulse has already flown overnight to show the staying power of its solar batteries in 2010, and then made the first intercontinental solar flight, flying from Europe to Africa last year. A project of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the plane is made out of carbon fiber, the lightest metal its buiders could find, and runs on four turboprop engines powered by batteries and solar panels.

But don’t get ready to take your next vacation on a commercial solar powered jet just yet. While the wingspan of the Solar Impulse is as long as a 747 and it is able to fly for 20 hours straight under normal conditions, it can only accomodate the weight of one person. It’s also pretty slow — it can only go 40 to 50 miles per hour, so this cross continental trip is going to take several days. This is also merely the first prototype, and they’ve only just begun work on the second. The second generation of the plane will be able to house two pilots an allow them to travel for many days at a time. But when most solar powered aircraft can’t support human weight at all, this is still a pretty big deal, and the team is hoping to have the second iteration of the aircraft ready for an around the globe flight by 2015.

[via Discovery News]

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Megan Patterson is the Science and Technology Editor at Paper Droids and currently a Toronto Standard intern. She has also written for WORN Fashion Journal, Elevate, and Salon Magazines. She also tweets more than is healthy or wise. 

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