Solar Impulse 2 was ready to take off on the final leg of its round-the-world solar flight, but it had to be postponed at the last minute. According to a Solar Impulse blog post, Piccard fell ill over the weekend with an upset stomach. In addition, the latest wind readings were too high for a safe take off.
As Bertrand Piccard’s colleague André Borschberg tweeted, “Cancelling the flight to Abu Dhabi is not an easy decision”, but he called it “a wise decision for safety reason”.
Piccard, the initiator of the Swiss solar-powered flight project and honourary vice president of the business association swisscleantech, will be in the cockpit for the final leg from Cairo to Abu Dhabi. The flight is estimated to last anywhere from 48 hours to 72 hours, something which is a challenge “even for a healthy pilot”.
The round-the-world journey will continue at a later date, once Piccard is healthy and a new weather window opens up. Engineers at the Mission Control Center in Monaco are hoping for a new take off date in the coming days.