Solar Impulse, an entirely Solar fuelled Aircraft is going to complete its first Cross country Flight across United States on Sunday. This is first time that a solar powered Aircraft would make such journey across the United States.
The Flight took off today at 5AM EDT from Washington Dulles International Airport and would reach John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York at 2AM EDT.
The Entire Cross Country Flight started on  May 3, 2013, at Moffett Airfield near San Francisco, and has since made hops at Phoenix, Dallas, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. This is the last hop of the journey from West Coast to East Coast.
The entire expedition is being driven by two Swiss pilots, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. Both have extensive backgrounds in aviation. Borschberg is a trained fighter pilot and engineer, while Piccard, a physician, became the first to pilot a balloon around the world nonstop.
The two men take turns sitting in an extremely cramped cockpit in a plane that took ten years and $115 million to produce. The first aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code of HB-SIA, is a single-seater monoplane, capable of taking off under its own power, and intended to remain airborne up to 36 hours Solar Impulse HB-SIA , which can climb to 28,000 feet (8,500 meters), can reach a maximum speed of 50 miles an hour (80 kilometers an hour) on its own. Strong tailwinds can boost the plane’s speed to 100 miles an hour (160 kilometers an hour).
Technically, the plane uses 12,000 silicon solar cells to power four electric motors, which in turn power the plane’s propellers using special electricity-storing batteries.
On 13 May 2011, at approximately 21:30 local time, HB-SIA landed at Brussels Airport, after completing a 13-hour flight from its home base in Switzerland. It was the first international flight by the Solar Impulse, which flew at an average altitude of 6,000 ft (1,829 m) for a distance of 630 km (391 mi), with an average speed of 50 km/h (31 mph).
On 5 June 2012, the Solar Impulse successfully completed its first intercontinental flight, flying a 19-hour trip from Madrid, Spain, to Rabat, Morocco
As per the plans Solar impulse would circle the world in the northern hemisphere, near the equator in 2015. Five stops are planned to allow changes of pilots. Each leg of the flight will last three to four days, limited by the physiology of each pilot.
Design Specifications
With a non-pressurized cockpit and a limited flight ceiling, the HB-SIA is primarily a demonstrator design. The plane has a similar wingspan to the Airbus A340 airliner. Under the wing are four nacelles, each with a set of lithium polymer batteries, a 10 hp (7.5 kW) motor and a twin-bladed propeller. To keep the wing as light as possible, a customised carbon fibre honeycomb sandwich structure is used. Â 11,628 photovoltaic cells on the upper wing surface and the horizontal stabilizer generate electricity during the day. These both propel the plane and charge its batteries to allow flight at night, theoretically enabling the single-seat plane to stay in the air indefinitely