they have to cancel the rest of the voyage in order to replace the battery packs because many of them were damaged by overheating during the leg from nagoya to hawaii.
the story is that they were doing testing of the air brakes and doing some maintenance testing while in nagoya, while waiting for the weather window to open. so they did a rapid climb to altitude and did a full on air brake test from altitude.
except that was the only time they had pushed the batteries and motors to max during the trip. the regular daily climb to 28,000' is done at the pace of the solar gain into the panels on the wings and structure and the batteries charge up during the day also in order to provide the power during the darkness.
so anyway the battery cells overheated during the rapid climb and were damaged enuff that they then were overheating during the leg from nagoya to hawaii. the batteries were so well insulated they could not scrub off the heat from the hi C run to altitude that created the problem of the cells overheating initially.
his trip to hawaii was also slowed and he had to double back in order to avoid a weather front over hawaii as he approached from the guam side. that added an extra day flying.
so the batteries are in various states of damage now and they intend to replace the entire array and start from there next year in april when the days are long enuff again.
