‘You’re hit with a slam of shadow’: Nasa’s air mission to capture rare eclipse data

The sun behind the moon during the Great North American Eclipse in April 2024, seen from in Mazatlan, Mexico. Photograph: Héctor Vivas/Getty Images

After lunch on Wednesday, two Nasa aviators will climb into a research plane and take off from Keflavik airport on a western tip of Iceland. They will climb north towards Greenland and then bank to head south on a gently curving course 40 miles (64km) off the Icelandic coast.

Their mission can be described as chasing an eclipse, but in reality the eclipse is chasing them. As the plane cruises at 50,000ft (15,000 metres), the shadow of the moon will race up from behind, crossing the ocean below at more than 2,000mph (3,200km/h). 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 them.