Completely powered by solar energy, the plane will travel through the globe in over five months as part of its round-the world flight.
The plane will have 12 stopovers across the world before it reaches Abu Dhabi again in early August. The next stops after Muscat will be in Ahmedabad and Varanasi, India; Mandalay, Myanmar; and Chongqing and Nanjing, China.
Solar Impulse 2 will cross the ocean via Hawaii, and stop in three locations in the US. It will cross the Atlantic Ocean to reach Southern Europe or North Africa before ending its tour in Abu Dhabi.
This is the first solar-powered plane to fly day and night without using a ‘drop of fuel’, the developers said.
The 35,000km journey will have approximately 25 flight days, travelling at speeds of between 50 and 100 km/h.
Si2 model has a wingspan of 72m but weighs 2.3 tonnes. The top of the wings are installed with 17,000 solar cells. The night flights are powered by lithium-ion batteries.
The plane arrived in Abu Dhabi in January in a disassembled state from Switzerland. It was reassembled and tested in the due course.
The record-making journey is being undertaken by founders of Solar Impulse and Swiss pilots Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard.
The project is being supported by Solvay, Omega, Schindler and ABB. Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy company Masdar is a partner.
A day before the flight, Solar Impulse started the ‘Future is Clean’ campaign to spread the message of clean energy across the globe.
Supported by Google, the campaign aims to mobile support against the Conference on Climate Change of the United Nations (COP21), which will define the new Kyoto protocol in December 2015 in Paris.
Borschberg and Piccard said: "Only a significant support will push governments to replace old polluting technologies with clean and efficient technologies.
"This is what we want to create throughout our solar powered Round-The-World Flight.
"If there are technological solutions to fly a plane day and night without fuel, imagine the potential of these technologies in our daily lives, to achieve energy savings and reduce CO2 emissions.
"This would help create jobs, develop new industrial markets while also protecting the environment".
Image: Solar Impulse 2 flying over Abu Dhabi during a test flight. Photo: courtesy of Solar Impulse.
