Two NASA pilots will depart from Keflavik airport in Iceland on Wednesday to conduct an airborne eclipse observation mission. The WB-57 research aircraft will fly northward toward Greenland before banking south along a path approximately 40 miles off the Icelandic coast, positioning itself to intercept the moon’s shadow as it races across the ocean at speeds exceeding 2,000 miles per hour.
From the ground, the eclipse will last 2 minutes and 18 seconds, but by flying along the shadow’s trajectory at 460 miles per hour, the mission team can extend the period of totality to nearly 3 minutes. This extended observation window provides additional time to study the obscured sun with specialized equipment. According to Cary Klemm, a sensor operator who has participated in previous eclipse flights, the experience at high altitude presents distinctive phenomena, including a dramatic shift from bright sunlight to complete darkness accompanied by noticeable temperature changes.
The aircraft’s nose cone houses four cameras designed to capture dozens of images per second across different wavelengths of light. These observations will focus on prominences—large loops of plasma—and nanoflares, which are magnetic explosions that release energy equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs. These phenomena are typically obscured by the sun’s bright disc and cannot be adequately studied through conventional observation methods. Dr. Amir Caspi, principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute, noted that airborne platforms offer advantages over both ground-based and space-based observation systems, particularly regarding data transmission capacity.
The research addresses a fundamental solar physics question: why the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, reaches temperatures exceeding 1,000,000 degrees Celsius while the surface remains at approximately 6,000 degrees. Understanding these processes and related solar phenomena contributes to space weather knowledge, which has implications for protecting astronauts, satellites, and terrestrial infrastructure including power grids and communications systems. The mission continues a historical tradition of using aircraft for eclipse science dating back to 1923, when the U.S. Navy deployed biplanes for observation purposes.
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