The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft reached the Statue of Liberty early Saturday. It circled the statue in an exciting photoshoot that gave a closure to the US portion of its effort to go around the globe with just solar power.
The shoot was at New York harbour, capturing the bright-powered aircraft even as it soared over the Verrazano Bridge and swept toward the towering statue.
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg who had the privilege of piloting the plane said: "The US is a country where you meet a lot of entrepreneurs and pioneers, and so to end our American crossing at the Statue of Liberty - which represents for me the freedom of enterprise and the freedom to innovate that is the spirit you can find in this country - is so symbolic."
He completed the 14th leg of an east-west journey beginning March 9, 2015 in Abu Dhabi, flying across Asia and the Pacific right up to the United States.
Throughout the flight, Borschberg fielded phone calls from well-wishers and journalists. He told one interviewer that he found the light getting denser as he left Pennsylvania and flew towards New York.
After flying around the statue, the plane swept along the Manhattan skyline and then headed back south in order to land at New York's Kennedy Airport, just a minute before its scheduled landing time of 3:59 am (0759 GMT).
Hence, the "light, slow-moving aircraft" completed the five-hour flight beginning from Lehigh Valley Airport in Pennsylvania.
The Solar Impulse team will now move on to fly across the Atlantic to touch Europe and then head towards Middle East.
Borschberg has shared the flight with his fellow Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, who is a doctor. He had completed the world's first non-stop balloon flight around the globe in 1999.
Piccard will now take over from his partner, to complete the next leg to Paris.
Both of them have set their goals high and then flown to touch them. They wanted to be the first to circumnavigate the earth in an aircraft powered only by the sun.
It is a single-seat aircraft, with the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and 17,000 solar cells. Battery-stored power fuels flights like a trip from Pennsylvania to New York.
The average speed is just 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour, but the speed doubles when it becomes exposed completely to sunlight.
The team is ecstatic that the plane has completed at least one lap. "It's absolutely incredible," Andre Borschberg said over a live video feed, even as the beautiful statue lit up the sky. "It's a dream here."
