The team behind Solar Impulse 2 has announced that the solar plane is ready to resume its record-breaking round-the-world flight, after battery damage caused the project to be put on hold in summer 2015.

The plane, which is entirely solar-powered and requires no form of additional fuel, is the first of its kind to take on such a feat, and is being used to promote the remarkable potential of sustainable solar technology.

Having spent the winter in Hawaii being repaired and improved, the plane will resume its round-the-world trip with a flight to Phoenix, Arizona, in the US in the next available window of favourable weather.

This initial flight will be piloted by Solar Impulse initiator and chairman Bertrand Piccard, who in 1999 became the first man to complete a non-stop round-the-world flight in a balloon. He has been alternating with co-founder and former Swiss fighter jet pilot André Borschberg, who in 2010 completed the first 24-hour solar powered flight.

From Phoenix Solar Impulse will be flown to an as-yet-unspecified location in the mid US, and then onto New York. A single trip will then see the plane cross the Atlantic Ocean to land somewhere in Europe, before the final journey will take it to Abu Dhabi, where the journey began back in March 2015.

The journey was due to be completed in 2015, however a sudden change in weather during the crossing from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the US, meant the team had to make a sudden and unplanned landing in Nagoya, Japan.

When the journey to Hawaii was resumed, Borschberg flew the plane continuously for a record-breaking 117 hours and 52 minutes to make it to Hawaii. In the process, the batteries were significantly damaged, as a result of miscalculations caused by the sudden and unexpected additional landing.

Now, however, the plane is fully ready to resume its journey, and Piccard and Borschberg are keen to get in the air once again.

“As we experienced many times with Solar Impulse, obstacles often turn out to be opportunities for improvement,” said Borschberg. “Ultimately, this time was used to recreate the strong mindset within the team to continue our adventure. It takes sometimes more time to build up the right spirit than to develop new technologies.”

The plane, which Factor was given rare access to in January 2015, features an incredible 72m wingspan, meaning finding runways capable of hosting it was a significant challenge for the Solar Impulse team.

It is capable of flying at up to 77KTS (140 miles per hour) at 27,000ft, meaning that once the epic mission has been completed, Piccard and Borschberg will have amassed over 500 hours in the air.