A solar-powered plane attempting to circumnavigate the globe has resumed its record-breaking journey.
The sun-powered plane, which took off last night, will take approximately 66 hours to make its journey to Mountain View, California, where it is expected to land late on Saturday night.
The aircraft, called the Solar Impulse 2, was grounded on the island of Oahu, Hawaii since July as a result of battery damage caused during the plane's record almost 118-hour trans-Pacific flight from Japan to Hawaii last July.
The Solar Impulse 2's batteries store energy from the sun during daylight hours to keep the aircraft powered overnight, allowing it to remain aloft around the clock on extreme long-distance flights.
The batteries became overheated during the plane's initial ascent after takeoff in June 2015 from Nagoya, Japan, en route to Hawaii on the seventh and most challenging leg of its circumnavigation attempt.
The team, however, in July stressed that the damage was “not a technical failure or weakness in the technology”.
Instead, the team said it had miscalculated the extent of the temperature increases and amount of insulation that would be needed for the tropical climate they encountered on the ascent from Nagoya.
Still, flight controllers and the pilot managed to successfully complete the Japan-to-Hawaii leg, safely landing in Honolulu on July 3 after five days and five night, or 117 hours and 52 minutes aloft.
The trip shattered the 76-hour record for a nonstop solo flight set in 2006 by the late American adventurer Steve Fossett in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.
The spindly single-seat experimental plane is the first aircraft to fly day and night without any fuel.
