Story ID: 
Polar Circumnavigation Set for November Departure
By: James Wynbrandt
Caption: The five- to six-month trip will highlight the mission's causes and promote STEM education, among other things.
Word Count: 265
Globe-girdling pilot Robert DeLaurentis plans a November departure for a Polar circumnavigation of the earth aboard “Citizen of the World,” a highly modified 1983 Gulfstream Twin Commander 900 turboprop. The trek is intended to promote STEM education, technology, and aviation safety, while linking “the two places on the planet where there has always been peace and all the people in between,” he said.

Heading southbound from San Diego, the five- to six-month journey will allow time to take advantage of the Poles’ respective summer weather, deal with en route aircraft squawks, and during stops in some 26 nations, highlight the mission’s causes. “It’s one planet, one people, one airplane,” said DeLaurentis.

Undergoing final modifications, the Twin Commander is outfitted with Honeywell TPE-331-10T engines and ten extra fuel tanks, delivering a range of more than 5,000 nm. No turboprop of its category has ever completed a Polar circumnavigation, he said, noting its Iridium satellite-based ADS-B system—one of the technologies it will demonstrate—makes this the first Polar circumnavigation tracked by such surveillance. In-flight activities will include testing prototype data-gathering wafer-scale spacecraft intended for NASA’s Starlight program, and hosting celebrity “ride alongs” (when the aircraft is not in ferry configuration).

Following the circumnavigation, DeLaurentis and the aircraft will embark on a two-year tour as a mobile STEM lab. Redbird Flight Simulations, one of some 85 sponsors, will support the roadshow with simulators incorporating simulations inspired by the journey, to be available on all its sims.

DeLaurentis’s documented his 2015 equatorial circumnavigation in his book Zen Pilot.