Last year, the Solar Impulse made its first transcontinental voyage, traveling 1,550 miles (2,495 kilometers) from Madrid to the Moroccan capital, Rabat, in 20 hours.
Piccard and Borschberg are planning an around-the-world flight in an improved version of the plane in 2015.
Piccard comes from a line of adventurers. His late father, Jacques, was an oceanographer and engineer who plunged deeper into the ocean than any other person. His grandfather Auguste, also an engineer, was the first man to take a balloon into the stratosphere.
Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones made history in 1999 when they became the first people to circle the globe in a hot air balloon, flying 25,000 miles (40,230 kilometers) nonstop for 20 days.
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