Solar Impulse II, the fuel-free aeroplane, is up in the air again on the fifth leg of its round-the-world flight.

The vehicle, with Bertrand Piccard at the controls, left Mandalay in Myanmar (Burma) just after 21:00 GMT on Sunday, and is heading for Chongqing in China.

The intention is to make a brief stop there, and then try to reach Nanjing on the east coast of the country.

This would set up Solar Impulse for the first of its big ocean crossings – a five-day, five-night flight to Hawaii.

Mission control will not make a decision on the Nanjing leg until late on Monday. The decision may rest on the state of the energy reserves held in the plane’s batteries.