section_path: Development, deployment and economics/Emerging technologies/Solar aircraft
section_name: Solar aircraft
paragraph_text: Solar aircraft
  
  An electric aircraft is an aircraft that runs on electric motors rather than internal combustion engines, with electricity coming from fuel cells, solar cells, ultracapacitors, power beaming, or batteries.
  
  Currently, flying manned electric aircraft are mostly experimental demonstrators, though many small unmanned aerial vehicles are powered by batteries. Electrically powered model aircraft have been flown since the 1970s, with one report in 1957. The first man-carrying electrically powered flights were made in 1973. Between 2015 and 2016, a manned, solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2, completed a circumnavigation of the Earth.