The record, approved on Wednesday by the FAI during its General Assembly “after several months of verification and certification”, was stopped at 9,640 meters, the SolarStratos project indicated in a press release.
The FAI, for its part, announced that it had awarded its Swiss pilot Raphaël Domjan the Louis Blériot medal, which has rewarded exceptional aeronautical performances since 1936.
This record established on August 12, 2025 in the canton of Valais far exceeds the mark of 9,235 meters previously established in 2010 by another Swiss project, the Solar Impulse by Bertrand Piccard.
“This distinction crowns more than ten years of research, testing and commitment to push the limits of electric and solar flight,” welcomed the SolarStratos project, which had previously led an unsuccessful flight campaign in 2024.
SolarStratos, launched in 2015, believes it has thus taken “a new step towards its ultimate objective: reaching the stratosphere aboard a manned electric and solar aircraft, without using a single drop of fossil fuel”.
In mid-latitudes such as Switzerland, the stratosphere is located at a height of 10 to 12 km depending on climatic conditions.
