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NEW YORK, June 11 (UPI) -- The clean energy airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed in New York City early Saturday, completing its cross-country journey that began in San Francisco April 24. The plane, which is powered by 17,000 solar cells on its wide wings, flies at an average speed of 28 mph and runs on stored energy at night, pilots Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard told CBS News.
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The plane has crossed the Pacific, flying nonstop from Hawaii to San Francisco before embarking on a cross-continental journey that took Solar Impulse 2 to Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio and Pennsylvania before finally landing at Kennedy Airport in New York City just after 4 a.m. Saturday.
The pilots snapped stunning photos of the nighttime New York City skyline on their way into the Big Apple, flying over the Statue of Liberty.
The pilots told CBS they want to leave "soon" for a trans-Atlantic slight to Europe or South America en route to completing a global circumnavigation, returning to Abu Dhabi, where they first took off in 2015.
