Solar Impulse attempts flight to Africa

Solar Impulse, the innovative solar-powered airplane, took its longest flight from Switzerland to Africa. The aircraft uses technical expertise, high-tech polymer materials and energy-saving lightweight materials from Bayer MaterialScience, an Official Partner to the visionary Swiss bid to fly night and day around the world without fuel. The testing followed successful test flights including Solar Impulse's first international flight, from Switzerland to France and Belgium, in 2011.

The flight to Morocco allowed mission controllers to gather additional experience in cooperating with international airports, integrating the prototype into regular air traffic patterns, and managing the logistics of maintenance. This coincided with the start of work in Morocco's Ouarzazate region to construct the largest solar power plant ever built. The Integrated Moroccan Solar Plan aims to develop a minimum power capacity of 2,000 MW by 2020. Bayer MaterialScience became an Official Partner of the Swiss Solar Impulse project in 2010. Since then, more than two dozen researchers have been working at the company's laboratories in Leverkusen, Dormagen and Krefeld-Uerdingen on ideas for lightweight construction and energy efficiency. Material solutions are, for example, part of the plane's pilot cabin, the wings and the motor gondolas. www.bayerbms.com