As mentioned by Brian in 2008, I think he's making up for all those hours of video gaming he didn't have when he was young! I'm sure there's a lot of envy there!

After this first night, I welcome the chance of talking about fatigue management, which we are testing here in Dübendorf during this virtual flight.

For the round the world flight, the pilot's rest strategy will be divided into 2 phases:

• For flights over land, the pilot will not sleep, because these flights will be shorter, something like 24 to 36 hours, and he will use relaxation techniques other than sleep. This is what André was doing during the 26 hour Night Flight in 2010.
• However, for crossing oceans (the Pacific and the Atlantic), the pilot will organise his sleep in multiple phases; he will take micro-naps of around 20 minutes each only on the parts of the flight that are outside controlled air spaces and only over water.

Here we are training in two types of rest: relaxation and napping (micro-naps). André can sleep for 6 hours in 20 minute periods staggered over a day (24 hrs).

In addition, we are taking advantage of the time André is in the simulator to put him into a sleep deficit situation so that we can assess his degree of vigilance day and night, before and after rest periods.

This will enable us to develop the best flight and rest strategy for each pilot based on their individual aptitudes.

In this exercise, the Solar Impulse team is supported by different partners to produce the best strategy: two laboratories at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) are taking part: the Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) and the Defitech Foundation Chair in Non-invasive Brain-computer Interfacing (CNBI)

The ESL is going to measure the pilot's heart rate and the CNBI will measure his brain activity. In parallel, the researchers from the EPFL are going to carry out attention and reaction-speed tests at regular intervals, and study his responses to questionnaires.

A team of Hirslanden doctors are monitoring the progress of the simulation and analysing the physiological and medical data gathered in order to measure the quality of the pilot's rest and also the effects of a long-duration flight.

Here is a video to give you a glimpse of these tests!