Solar Impulse: Plane damaged after landing in Japan

The Solar Impulse aircraft was forced to land on Monday after weather conditions worsened while it was flying across the Pacific Ocean.

It touched down smoothly, but gusts of wind damaged its delicate wings in the hours after landing.

The team is confident it can repair the plane and continue the epic journey.

Solar Impulse's co-founder, Andre Borschberg tweeted: "Small damage on one of the aileron of @solarimpulse which will necessitate at least a week to repair but not a major issue."

It has been a challenging few days for the Solar Impulse team.

The experimental plane, which has 17,000 solar cells on its wings, began its circumnavigation of the globe in Abu Dhabi in March.

The first six stages of the flight were relatively straightforward. But the seventh leg - an 8,000km-flight across the Pacific - has proved difficult.

The team waited for more than a month in Nanjing, China, for the right weather conditions to travel over the ocean towards Hawaii.

They thought they had found the perfect window, and set off on Saturday at 18:39 GMT.

However a cold front forced the team to cut the journey short, and the plane made an unscheduled stop in Japan on Monday at 23:49 local time (14:49 GMT).

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