The MS Turanor PlanetSolar, which is also known by the project name of PlanetSolar, is the biggest boat that is powered by solar energy in the world. It was designed and developed by LOMOcean Design and constructed by Knieram Yachtbau located in Kiel, Germany and it was first launched on March 31, 2010. It had become the first ever vehicle powered by solar electricity to circumnavigate the entire globe in May 2012 and the boat had also broken her own record for speed. The boat is 31 meters long and 537 square miles of solar powers cover it that power both of the electric motors that are located in each hull.
It had undertaken a trip down the Gulf Stream in order to help scientists and researchers understand how climate changes are having an affect on the weather in Europe. The team of scientists was put together using experts from different disciplines from the Forel Institute of Aquatic Sciences, the Department of Applied Physics and Institute of Environmental Sciences from the University of Geneva. The scientific committee included various professors, including Jean-Pierre Wolf, Jérôme Kasparian, Bastiaan Ibelings, Christel Hassler and Martin Beniston. The trip had been undertaken from the French West Indies then to Miami, Florida and on to Bergen, Norway and plenty of places in between.
Professor Beniston was part of the expedition, which was more than 8,000 kilometers in distance, and he was attempting to understand how the climate changes would affect the country and the huge impact on the different temperatures. They had chosen to research in the Gulf Stream because the ocean current is helpful in carrying the heat that is coming from the tropics to the North Atlantic area, which is one of the most crucial regulators of the North American and European climates. They had also studied the microorganisms in the water to see how they could be a key in the future climate change.
This boat had been used for this research trip because it wouldn’t exert any pollution, which meant that the atmospheric measurements wouldn’t be cross-contaminated with fuel combustion. The boat is thought to be an ambassador into solar power and transportation, but also this boat was perfect for the researchers and their requirements. However, this was the biggest boat that would contain all of the required scientists at one given point and was also used to showcase how solar power could be used.
