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 The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support
for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its
circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March
2015.
The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse
2, arrived in Phoenix shortly before 9 p.m., following a flight from
San Francisco that took it over the Mojave Desert.
The flight would have taken a conventional airplane just two hours,
but the solar craft's cruising speed, akin to that of a car,
required pilots to take up meditation and hypnosis in training to
stay alert for long periods.
Occupying the tiny cockpit for the trip was project co-founder Andre
Borschberg, who alternates with fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard at the
controls for each segment of what they hope will be the first
round-the-world solar-powered flight.
 "I made it to Phoenix, what an amazing flight over the Mojave
desert," Borschberg said in a Twitter post.
Borschberg was the pilot for the Japan-to-Hawaii trip over the
Pacific last July, staying airborne for nearly 118 hours.
That shattered the 76-hour world duration record for a non-stop,
solo flight set in 2006 by the late American adventurer Steve
Fossett in his Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. It also set new
duration and distance records for solar-powered flight.The feat,
however, dealt a setback to the Solar Impulse, which suffered severe
battery damage, requiring repairs and testing that grounded it in
Hawaii for nine months.
Piccard completed the trans-Pacific crossing last month, reaching
San Francisco after a flight of nearly three days, more than three
times the 18 hours Amelia Earhart took to fly solo from Hawaii to
California in the 1930s.
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The biggest difference is that the propeller-driven Solar Impulse
flies without a drop of fuel, its four engines powered solely by
energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells built into its
wings.
Surplus power is stored in four batteries during the day, to keep
the plane aloft on extreme long-distance flights.
The carbon-fiber plane, with a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing
747 and the weight of a family car, is unlikely to set speed or
altitude records. It can climb to 28,000 feet (8,500 m), and cruise
at 34 to 62 mph (55 to 100 kph).
In a precursor of their globe-circling quest, the two men completed
a multi-flight crossing of the United States with an earlier version
of the solar plane in 2013.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Dan
Grebler and Alison Williams)
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