Solar Impulse 2 team begin preparations for next leg of round-the-world journey

Hasan Al Redaini will create media content for the mission’s website, Twitter feed and YouTube channel. Christopher Pike / The National

ABU DHABI // With a record-breaking flight behind them, the Solar Impulse 2 team is preparing for the next leg of the round-the-world flight without using fossil fuel.

After the aircraft’s arrival at California’s Moffett Federal Airfield south of San Francisco Bay on Sunday morning, the crews will prepare for the solar-powered plane’s 10th leg – a flight of about 2,000 kilometres to a yet-to-be-disclosed destination in mid continent.

“It was a much anticipated landing,” said Emirati Hasan Al Redaini, 25, a Solar Impulse crew member in California.

“Personally, it’s different than working in an office and being hands-on and on the ground level of things. Everyone collaborated to ensure safety and a successful landing of the plane and the pilot.

“Most of the team are glad to have advanced and re-experienced mission mode.”

With the Pacific crossing completed, Mr Al Redaini, a communications officer at Mubadala, said the plane was housed in a mobile hangar.

Mr Al Redaini said he would participate in organising and conducting press conferences, media tours, pilot interviews, arranging mission logistics, and creating media content for the mission’s website, Twitter feed and YouTube channel.

“All teams are deployed 100 per cent from the media, to the logistics to the ground crew. We go through briefings, trainings and preparations,” he said.

“As a UAE representative, I also have my social media channels and potentially more UAE engagement activities that will be confirmed within a few weeks.”

It has yet to be announced which city Solar Impulse will be flying to, or which pilot – either Bertrand Piccard or Andre Borschberg, the co-founders – will take to the cockpit. And no flight date has been announced.

“We have teams going ahead to the next destinations while some stay,” Mr Al Redaini said.

“This makes it well for the team to ensure everything goes well for the last leg back to Abu Dhabi.”

From its next stop, the plane is expected to fly to New York before crossing the Atlantic into Europe, and finally arriving in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March last year.

“Everyone is confident that we will be able to complete the circumnavigation as one team,” said Mr Al Redaini.