A team attempting to fly a solar-powered plane around the world has been forced to suspend its journey in Hawaii after the plane suffered battery damage during its record-breaking flight to the islands.

The Solar Impulse team said it would continue the bid to circumvent the globe, but irreversible damage caused by overheating batteries would ground the flight until at least April.

The batteries on board Solar Impulse 2 overheated on the first day of its trip from Japan to Hawaii, and there was no way to cool down the system, the team said. It said there was no weakness in the technology, but the team had not anticipated temperature fluctuations associated with rapid altitude changes in a tropical climate.

Pilot André Borschberg and his single-seat aircraft landed at Kalaeloa, a small airport outside Honolulu, on 3 July. His voyage of nearly 118 hours from Nagoya, Japan, broke the record for the world's longest non-stop solo flight, his team said.

The wings of Solar Impulse 2, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane ran on stored energy at night.