Battery problem grounds Solar Impulse until 2016

Ars Technica » Scientific Method 2015-07-15

Today, the Solar Impulse team announced that its record-setting aircraft was done for the year. Solar Impulse 2 has been stranded in Hawaii by battery problems that cropped up during its flight there from Japan. The team has now determined that there's a need to replace a lot of this hardware and that the time required to do so will mean that the flight cannot be completed before changing seasons cut down on the hours of sunlight available for the remaining legs of its flight.

Despite the successful conclusion of the flight from Nagoya to Oahu, problems had cropped up during the initial ascent, when some of the aircraft's many batteries overheated. The problem wasn't specific to the hardware; rather, the cooling system wasn't able to handle rapid ascents or descents in tropical conditions. The unfortunate result was permanent damage to some of the batteries, which will require several months to repair.

That means the next flight couldn't occur until the autumn. And that poses a problem; Solar Impulse requires a certain amount of sunlight during the day, and the amount of sunlight available in the Northern Hemisphere would be shrinking during that time. As a result, the organizers have decided they'll over-winter in Hawaii (they wouldn't be the first to make that decision) and start the next leg to Phoenix in the spring.

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