NASA to Use High-Altitude Jets and Balloons for August 2026 Solar Eclipse

Chasing the Shadow: NASA’s Airborne Strategy for the August 2026 Eclipse

When the Moon blocks the Sun on August 12, 2026, scientific teams will chase the shadow using high-altitude aircraft and weather balloons, as NASA’s science missions target the solar corona. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, as the next total solar eclipse sweeps over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, NASA-funded science teams will be chasing the Moon’s shadow with a high-altitude jet and scientific balloons to investigate the Sun’s dynamics and how the temporary darkening of our skies affects our atmosphere. The path of totality starts in far northern Siberia, close to the North Pole, then runs south through the Arctic and the North Atlantic, crossing western Iceland, including Reykjavík, before reaching northern Spain – with a small corner of Portugal squeezed inside the band.

From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system, said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence. Soaring in the nose cone of NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft is a suite of four cameras to take high-resolution images of the corona in several different wavelengths of visible and infrared light. This equipment is part of an instrument developed by the NASA Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Global Visibility and the Rare Alignment with the Perseid Meteor Shower

While totality remains restricted to specific geographic corridors, the event coincides with dark, moonless nights ideal for astronomy. A total solar eclipse can only occur during a new moon, when the Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun with its sunlit side facing away from us, meaning every totality comes bundled with dark, moonless nights on either side of it. This year, that bonus coincides with the Perseids, the northern summer’s most popular meteor shower, on a peak night skywatchers have anticipated for years. This year’s peak—the period with the most meteors—is expected to fall on August 12 and August 13, on which days skygazers can expect to see between 30 and 50 meteors an hour or more. Meteor showers occur when the Earth’s orbit crosses paths with a trail of dust and debris left behind by an asteroid or comet, and in the case of the Perseids, the cosmic debris comes from an unusually large comet called 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which is about 16 miles (26 kilometers) across.

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In North America, observers will experience a partial eclipse rather than totality. In Canada and some parts of the U.S., there will be no totality — just a small partial solar eclipse. A partial solar eclipse is visible across the northern tier from Alaska to North Carolina, as well as across most of Canada.

Atmospheric Research and the European Totality Finale

The eclipse will come on the same day as the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak under dark, moonless skies, creating a unique day for skywatchers. In Spain, the shadow will travel roughly from the northern coast. This is mainland Spain’s first total solar eclipse since August 30, 1905. Near the North Pole, totality lasts 1 minute 54 seconds, along the Greenland coast it stretches to 2 minutes 6 seconds, and the Moon will be barely a day past its closest approach to Earth, so its disk looks big enough to cover the Sun outright instead of leaving a ring of light behind.