even after over two years after its launch, the MS Turanor PlanetSolar Boat is still worthy of being feature here. especially after it has made a historical 19-month trip, circumnavigating the world’s water with just only solar power. more recently, the Swiss catamaran sets sail with a scientific purpose; to collect data along the Gulf Stream under the project dubbed as The DeepWater Expedition. crowned as the largest solar-powered watercraft, it has 516 square-meter of photovoltaic panel all lined up on the surface of the boat, converting the sun energy to feed its 8.5 tons of lithium-ion batteries that powers its 120kW electric motor and enabling it to cruise on the open water at a modest pace of 5 knots (average). the boat kicked off its leg from Miami, after which it made a friendly drop at New York which will followed by a few port of calls in Boston, Canada, Iceland, before finally, completing the trip in Norway.
at just barely 10 km an hour, the exploration would takes month to complete, but this incidentally, allows the scientists from the University of Geneva to “collect scientific data, from both water and air, in order to better understand complex interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere as well as the role of these interactions in climate change.” well, with that note, we shall wish the crew and the research team onboard the MS Turanor PlanetSolar Boat all the best in their endeavor. in the mean time, you can check out more “live” exclusive photos available on Inhabitat. but before you go, you might want to check out the 2013 Launch Campaign in the embedded video below.
PlanetSolar via Inhabitat
