Solar Impulse 2 — flown by Bertrand Piccard — touched down safely at Moffett airfield, close to San Francisco, at 6:44AM UTC on 24th April after a 62 hour flight from Kalaeloa Airport, Hawaii. The 4,086km flight takes the solar-powered aircraft beyond the half-way point on its 35,000km round-the-world trip, starting and ending in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It has now completed nine of the 13 legs of the trip and has logged a total of 19,957km.

André Borschberg had initiated the Pacific crossing last July with a flight from Nagoya to Hawaii lasting 117 hours and 52 minutes — the longest leg of the journey. The aircraft was then confined to its Kalaeloa hangar for nine months to fix a battery problem and wait for the days to lengthen enough to resume flying.

The flight, which reached an altitude of 8,634km, ended with an epic flyover of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city of San Francisco. The arrival marked the team’s second visit to Moffett airfield, which was visited by Solar Impulse 1 in 2013.

Solar Impulse will take off for its tenth flight to a city to be determined in the middle of the U.S., a distance of about 2,030km for an estimated flying time of 30 hours.