On 12 August 2026, parts of Europe experienced a total solar eclipse. But hours before the Moon’s shadow swept over Earth, the satellite pair making up ESA’s Proba-3 mission witnessed this cosmic marvel from a front-row seat.
Coincidentally, the goal of these two spacecraft is to create eclipses on their own, without the help of the Moon. As they align in perfect formation 60 000 km above Earth, the Occulter spacecraft acts as an artificial Moon and eclipses the Sun for the Coronagraph spacecraft, which then has an uninterrupted view of the Sun’s corona for hours at a time.
But two days ago, the Moon had another idea.
This short clip is made up of images captured by the mission’s coronagraph instrument, ASPIICS, in the morning of 12 August. In the space of three hours, our closest celestial neighbour is seen crossing Proba-3’s field of view.
Creating a shadow slightly larger than the occulting disc of Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft, the Moon covered the solar disc for 8 min 40 s, as the two spacecraft continued to hold their own artificial eclipse.
Because Proba-3 was closer to the Moon than Earth was, the mission’s double eclipse lasted much longer than the maximum duration of totality on the ground, which was 2 min 18 s just off the coast of Iceland.
During the almost nine minutes of a double eclipse, the ASPIICS coronagraph was essentially free from parasitic light, which is usually produced by diffraction of the solar disc light on the edge of the Occulter spacecraft. This allowed scientists to calibrate the optical performance of the ASPIICS coronagraph, as well as briefly observe the corona in the best conditions.
A double eclipse like this one is a once-in-a-lifetime event for Proba-3. Before the mission ends, it will experience two partial eclipses during the next two on-ground total eclipses (2 August 2027 and 22 July 2028). During these the Moon will pass through the ASPIICS field of view, but it will not cover the full solar disc.
Millions of people, as well as many space missions, captured the natural 2026 solar eclipse: here’s our selection.