Following the longest and most difficult leg of the round-the-world solar flight, Solar Impulse 2 will now have to spend several weeks grounded in Hawaii to undergo maintenance repairs and replacements to its batteries, according to a news release. The battery temperature increased too much on day one of the flight from Nagoya to Hawaii due to over insulation, and the batteries were irreversibly damaged.
The overheating occurred during the first ascent on the record-breaking flight of five days and five nights (117 hours and 52 minutes), but there was no way to decrease the temperature as each daily cycle required ascending and descending for energy management issues.
The Solar Impulse team, lead by Betrand Piccard and André Borschberg, is now looking at various options for better management of the cooling and heating process for very long flights.