On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)

A tourist watches as the moon passing in front of the sun as it approaches a full solar eclipse in the northern Australian city of Cairns November 14, 2012. (Photo by Tim Wimborne/Reuters)

A general view shows solar panels to produce renewable energy at the photovoltaic park in Les Mees, in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, southern France March 31, 2015. The solar farm of the Colle des Mees, the biggest in France, consists of 112,780 solar modules covering an area of 200 hectares of land and representing 100 MW of power. (Photo by Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters)

“Solar Impulse is a European long-range solar powered plane project being undertaken by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The project eventually hopes to succeed in the first circling of the earth with a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power. The first aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code of HB-SIA, is a single-seater, capable of taking off under its own power, and intended to remain airborne up to 36 hours. This aircraft first flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly 9 hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight on 7–8 July 2010”. – Wikipedia


Photo: Workers prepare the Solar Impulse airplane HB-SIA for a first runway test on November 19, 2009 in Dubendorf, Switzerland. Solar Impulse chairman Bertrand Piccard, psychatrist and aeronaut, who made the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and CEO and former fighter pilot Andrй Borschberg plan a round-the-world flight, driven only by solar energy, for 2012. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

A woman looks at La Paz city from the Jacha Qhatu cable car station in El Alto, July 23, 2015. Bolivia already has the largest urban cable car system in the world. Now the booming country is tripling the size of the network and will soon have nine lines whizzing above the administrative capital of La Paz. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard prepares for a test flight of the solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 experimental aircraft in Payerne November 13, 2014. The aircraft, weighing 2.4 tons with a wingspan of 72 meters, is fitted with more than 17,000 solar cells. An attempt to fly around the world in stages using only solar energy will be made in 2015. (Photo by Ruben Sprich/Reuters)

A undated handout image provided by the Bochum University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Bochum) on 04 October 2013 shows the German team Bochum's Cruiser class solar car during a test drive in the Northern Territoty, Australia, 16 September 2013. The Dutch vehicle is competing in the World Solar Challenge, driving from Darwin to Adelaide starting on 06 October 2013. (Photo by Hochschule Bochum/EPA)

Photographers gather to take pictures of pilot Andre Borschberg (C) ahead of the take off of Solar Impulse 2-a solar powered plane- in Nanjing, China, May 31, 2015. The world's largest solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2, took off from eastern China's Nanjing on Sunday to continue its round-the-world voyage. The Swiss-made plane left Nanjing's Lukou International Airport at 2:39 in the early morning, with former fighter pilot Borschberg at the controls alone for the entire 8,200-kilometer flight from Nanjing to Hawaii, the toughest leg of its marathon adventure. (Photo by Reuters/Solar Impulse)