The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse took off from southwestern France Tuesday on the final leg of its first intercontinental trip that took it from Europe to North Africa and back.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard took the plane up into the sky from an airfield near Toulouse on its journey back to Payerne in Switzerland, from where it left on May 24 for the Moroccan capital Rabat via Madrid.

The high-tech aircraft, which has the wingspan of a large airliner but weighs no more than a saloon car, is fitted with 12,000 solar cells feeding four electric engines.

Solar Impulse had to wait for a week in Toulouse for the right weather conditions. It departed Tuesday in a cloudless sky and was due to arrive in Payerne around 18:00 GMT.

Once this final stage is completed, the 6,000-kilometer journey will be the longest to date for the aircraft after an inaugural flight to Paris and Brussels last year.

The flight was being live-streamed on www.solarimpulse.com, the website of the project run by Piccard, an explorer who has traveled around the world in a hot-air balloon, and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg, who took turns to fly the plane on its latest journey.

The trip was intended as a rehearsal in the runup to a round-the-world flight planned for 2014 by an updated version of the plane.

AFP