CRI听力:Solar Impulse 2 Lands in Arizona

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The trip from California to Arizona usually takes an airliner no more than two hours.

But the time for the spindly, single-seat 'Solar Impulse 2' was 16 hours, due to its cruising speed more akin to that of a car.

Occupying the tiny cockpit for the trip was Andre Borschberg and co-pilot Bertrand Piccard.
Upon arrival, Borschberg talked about how they enjoyed the trip.

"I tell you, today was the music. It was a day where the music made me very emotional. And when you are up there, when you can fly with the sun, when you have this potential, the engine doesn't make any noise, doesn't make any pollution, you feel, the music made me almost cry."

The California-to-Arizona flight marked the 10th leg of the plane's round-the-world journey.

After Arizona, the plane will make two more stops in the United States before crossing the Atlantic.

It will then fly across Southern Europe and arrive back in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March of last year.

Borschberg has also praised the technology that uses the sun to charge the plane and keep it flying.

"It's long but it's such a great experience to fly with the sun. You take off with almost empty batteries, you can fly the entire day. You can recharge the batteries and then you start to fly a day, two days, three days, a week. I mean, there's no limit."
The 'Solar Impulse 2' has over 17-thousand solar panels on its wings and is powered only by the sun.

It landed in Hawaii last July, and was forced to stay there after its battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan.

Before that, 'Solar Impulse 2' also had to wait for over a month in Nanjing to get the right weather conditions to make its flight to Japan.

Despite the setback over the Pacific, the crew that remained airborne for nearly 118 hours, shattered the 76-hour world duration record for a non-stop, solo flight set in 2006 by the late American adventurer Steve Fossett in his Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.

It also set new duration and distance records for solar-powered flight.