Aviation has been greening with a quickness; planes are getting lighter, more efficiently designed, biofueled, and now, solar powered.

The Solar Impulse plane, by entrepreneur and scientist Bertrand Piccard, André Borschberg and team, is designed to circle the globe without emitting anything in 2011.

The Solar Impulse will be the first solely solar powered aircraft containing a human to fly. It differs from other solar prototypes because it will use its own energy to take off and land and plans to somehow fly at night. The solar impulse is specially designed; built using composite lightweight materials, narrow, the weight of a car, and fitted with super long wings covered by solar panels that charge internally stored batteries. The team admits that efficiency improvements that have yet to be invented will be necessary for the project to be successful.

Piccard and Borschberg have serious money and technology behind their effort. They are supported by the likes of Deutsche Bank, Swiss timepiece maker/ NASA partner Omega, French tech companies, the European Space Agency, the Swiss Institute of Technology, the European Commission and more.

The Solar Impulse has long way to go before we’ll be able to watch it circumnavigate the globe from our solar iPhones, but when it does, the moment will be tantamount to Lance Armstrong’s small step for man. The Solar Impulse project represents thinking big for renewable energy, the only way we should be thinking.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal. 

Photo By Solar Impulse.