Skip to footer

Solar plane makes unexpected landing in Japan

The seventh leg of a solar-powered plane's attempted round-the-world flight has cut short due to bad weather, forcing it to land in Japan. 

|
Takuya Inaba/Kyodo News via AP
The Solar Impulse 2 flies over Nagoya Airport in Toyoyama, central Japan, shortly before its landing on Monday.

| Tokyo

A solar-powered plane attempting a round-the-world flight will cut short the seventh leg of its 35,000-km global (22,000-mile) journey, landing in Nagoya, western Japan, due to bad weather.

The plane will land at a small airport in Nagoya around midnight local time, one of the project's organizers told Reuters.

The Solar Impulse 2, a solar powered plane, left Nanjing, China on Sunday to fly over the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. The plane, which is covered in solar cells, took off from Abu Dhabi in March.

The journey across the Pacific Ocean was expected to be the most difficult stretch of the journey.

Overall, the trip was expected to span approximately 25 flight days broken up into 12 legs at speeds between 50 and 100 kph (30 to 60 mph).

(Reporting by Olivier Fabre; Writing by Mari Saito)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Solar plane makes unexpected landing in Japan
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0601/Solar-plane-makes-unexpected-landing-in-Japan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe