A solar-powered plane took off from Japan on Monday on the seventh leg of its journey round the world, a trans-Pacific crossing expected to be the toughest part of the trip. The Solar Impulse 2 left Nanjing, China, on May 31 for Hawaii, but was forced to cut short its bid a day later due to what pilot Andre Borschberg termed "a wall of clouds" over the Pacific and land in the central Japanese city of Nagoya.
Its departure was postponed several times due to poor weather, once last week with the plane - which bears 17,000 solar cells across its wingspan - on standby at the end of a runway. "This is a one-way ticket to Hawaii," organisers said on their website on Monday, eight hours after the plane's pre-dawn departure. "Andre Borschberg ... must now see this five-days-five-nights flight through to the end."