Historic Solar-Powered Flight - Too Exciting for Words - Almost....

I am more than excited about the longest and highest solar-powered airplane flight that was just completed in Switzerland. This is one of those events for which I feel privileged to be alive! Back in January, we featured the Solar Impulse experimental solar-powered aircraft on Solaripedia. On Wednesday, 7 June, 2010 the Impulse was launched, and 26 hours later on the next day it landed safely in Switzerland after successfully flying through the night. The historic feat is a step toward the makers' aim of circling the globe using the power of the sun to fuel the plane. The aircraft uses super-efficient solar cells and batteries to stay in the air after the sun's rays are on the other side of the earth. If you're not ecstatic about it yet, please read more about it - the implications are staggering!

Discovery Center Teaches Ecology in Kansas City, Missouri

A Discovery Center’s near downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA, provides a teaching tool with interactive exhibits and a landscape that shows how nature works. The building itself uses a form and orientation that optimize daylighting. A geothermal heat pump heats and cools the building. Four PV arrays with 74 collectors reduce annual energy use by about 33 percent over conventional systems. One of the central attractions is the facility’s Living Machine (livingmachines.com) that is a wastewater system that reclaims all water from the building’s toilets, sinks, showers, and drinking fountains for treatment within an exposed greenhouse setting. The treated water is used later for flushing toilets and to recharge the outdoor wetland.