Two NASA aviators will take off from Iceland on Wednesday afternoon in a high-altitude research aircraft to chase a total solar eclipse across the North Atlantic, gathering data on solar phenomena that could disrupt Europe's power grids and satellite networks. The WB-57 research plane will depart Keflavik airport and fly north toward Greenland before banking south along Iceland's coast, racing the moon's shadow at 460 mph to extend the eclipse's totality from 2 minutes 18 seconds to nearly 3 minutes.
Why Aircraft Beat Ground Stations
The mission centres on capturing images of the sun's corona — its superheated outer atmosphere — during the brief window when the moon blocks the sun's blinding surface. Four cameras hidden in the aircraft's nose cone will photograph the occluded sun at dozens of frames per second across different wavelengths, targeting magnetic explosions called nanoflares and massive plasma loops known as prominences. Dr Amir Caspi, principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said aircraft offer advantages ground-based observatories can't match. "As you can imagine, this is terabytes of information," he said. Ground cameras contend with clouds and atmospheric interference, while space-based instruments face severe data transmission limits.
The WB-57 — based on the English Electric Canberra bomber, the RAF's Cold War tactical nuclear strike aircraft — cruises at 50,000 feet in the stratosphere, above weather and atmospheric distortion. Cary Klemm, a sensor equipment operator at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston who's flown eclipse missions before, described the experience: "The big difference is that in the cockpit of an aircraft at 50,000 feet, it's very bright in the sun. There are no clouds above you, and then all of a sudden, you're hit with this slam of shadow." He added, "You feel the temperature drop off; you'll notice that you need more light from your instruments, and it's kind of a weird, eerie shadow that you're surrounded by. It wraps around the view in the cockpit."
The Nanoflare Question
The mission's scientific target is a puzzle that's vexed solar physicists for decades: why the sun's corona reaches temperatures exceeding 1,000,000C while the surface sits at 6,000C. Caspi said nanoflares — magnetic explosions releasing energy equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs — may provide the answer. "Solar eclipses give us an opportunity to do science we couldn't do at any other time," he said. Understanding these processes isn't academic. "Understanding space weather is critical for us as a technological species, and it starts with understanding the processes at the sun," Caspi said. Solar storms can knock out power grids, disable satellites, and disrupt GPS navigation — risks that grow as Europe's economy becomes more dependent on space-based infrastructure.
A Century of Eclipse Chasing
Wednesday's flight continues a tradition stretching back 103 years. In 1923 the U.S. Navy sent a fleet of biplanes to observe an eclipse without much success. Fifty years later scientists persuaded the French to cut holes in the roof of a Concorde prototype; flying over the Sahara at Mach 2, they kept up with an eclipse shadow for 74 minutes. The pilot will aim to reach the point of greatest eclipse — when the largest fraction of the sun is obscured by the moon — at the moment the shadow catches up with the aircraft. The moon's shadow will race up from behind at more than 2,000 mph. For anyone directly beneath the eclipse, the world will go dark for 2 minutes 18 seconds.
Caspi reflected on the rarity of the event. "What percentage of humanity has ever witnessed a total solar eclipse? It's a fraction of a fraction of a per cent," he said. "If you're part of that rare group, you're connected to the Earth and the sun and the solar system. It's mind-blowing. It makes you feel very special, but also very small because you are this little mote in the universe."
Why This Matters:
Europe's electricity networks, satellite communications, and GPS-dependent transport systems face growing vulnerability to solar weather events. The 1989 Quebec blackout demonstrated how geomagnetic storms can collapse power grids; a repeat today would hit harder as infrastructure becomes more interconnected and reliant on vulnerable electronics. Wednesday's mission targets the physical processes behind these storms — nanoflares and coronal dynamics that remain poorly understood despite their potential to disrupt modern economies. The terabytes of high-resolution data captured during the eclipse could improve forecasting models that give grid operators and satellite controllers advance warning of incoming solar storms. That's not abstract science — it's infrastructure resilience. As Europe pushes toward electrification of transport and heating, understanding and predicting space weather becomes a matter of economic security.