Solar-powered plane to go around the world next year

While world leaders cudgelled each other's brains to little avail at the Copenhagen climate summit, a group of visionary aviation scientists was taking the first steps towards changing the fuel-guzzling way that we fly.

Housed in a hangar at the Dubendorf air base in Switzerland, the team headed by Swiss aeronautical pioneer Bertrand Piccard earlier this month test-flew the 'Solar Impulse', - an aircraft powered entirely by the sun, even at night.

This flight was only a "flea hop" - piloted by a German engineer, the aircraft rose about a metre off the runway and covered 350 metres. But it is being compared to the first flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, which led to amazingly rapid developments in aviation.

The scientists and engineers are now working full-steam to fly the aircraft around the world for 36 hours through day and night in the spring or summer of 2010, Piccard said on Monday.

"What is being done is not a revolution. We try and open a new path and see what happens. We do not claim that commercial aviation will run on solar energy in the next couple of years. The Solar Impulse project is an attempt to show what can be achieved by renewable energies and new technologies," he told the media.

The difference between this aircraft and similar ones developed earlier is that this is being developed to fly at night, Piccard, who created a record by being the first to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon, said.