From 7 minutes to 74 minutes: How a supersonic jet Concorde made day turn to night for over an hour

In the summer of 1973, a small scientist team boarded Supersonic Jet Concorde 001 to follow a solar eclipse, not to break the aviation records. On June 30, on the Sahara Desert, they succeeded in things that no one had before: 74 minutes of uninterrupted integrity.

The longest possible total eclipse from the ground lasts a little more than seven minutes. It was unusual to keep it on that day, but even then, the natural border could not be overcome without leaving the surface of the Earth. Concorde changed this.

Turning Concorde into a flying observer

Concorde 001, a prototype supersonic jet, has been changed for task. The engineers cut the observation porthols on the roof and established scientific equipment and turned the passenger aircraft into a high altitude laboratory.
He left Las Palmas on the Canary Islands and climbed 55,000 feet. Mach 2.05, flying more than 2,500 kilometers per hour, seizing the shadow of the moon that competed along the world at 2,400 kilometers per hour. The current rapidly remained much longer than fixed observers in the aircraft Umbra.

Jet crossed Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Nigeria before landing for Chad. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Paris Observatory, Kit Peak National Observatory, London Queen Mary University, Aberdeen University and French National Scientific Research Center.

Sensitivity to the clock

The success of the flight was dependent on the definite timing. A scientific article on the task then said: “If the plane was 2 minutes early in the arrival of the eclipse, the integrity period would decrease by 25 minutes and a natural contact would disappear.” These “contacts” point to the phases when the moon touches the disc and separated of the sun disk. Scientists in Concorde were able to observe a seven -minute first contact and a third 12 -minute third theme, living much longer than anyone else on the ground. More than 16,000 meters, the plane avoided cloud and turbulence. However, even at such an altitude, the full shadow was a challenging success of both pilot and astronomy.

Opening the Sun Coron

The aim was to examine the sun corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. Although it appears to my fin, Corona is warmer hundreds of times than the sun surface, today is a puzzle that still challenges physicists.

Five scientific teams carried equipment to examine the structure, record dynamic features and capture high resolution images. Extra time in integrity provided data that ground -based telescopes could never be collected.

Donald Liebenberg, a physicist from Los Alamos who participated in the flight, then wrote: ık We caught the integrity of the Chad before and down to the African country and stayed in 74 minutes. Our group in Concorde was an experience that I would never break.

Then he added a separate reflection: “At least, it was an experience that I would never forget.” Until then, it had recorded more time to be eclipse than other people.

EXPERT EXPERIENCE

The researchers said Supersonic Flight sets a new criterion and said, “Future plans should support this method on more traditional approaches”.

Concorde showed that speed and height can increase the limits of nature. For scientists, Eclipse opened a new paradigm in his research;

Concorde was then used even for the retention of tourists. In August 1999, three Concords carried the payment passengers to the shadow of the month, but the experience was much shorter and more complex by the small windows of the plane. These flights were popular, but none of them approached the success of 1973.

From Concorde to satellites

Since Concorde’s retirement, scientists have sought new ways to expand the integrity. In 2024, NASA used WB-57 jets to read a eclipse on North America. Bharat Kunduri, who pioneered a project to examine the ionosphere, explained: “The eclipse acts as a basically controlled experiment. It gives us the opportunity to understand how the changes in solar radiation can affect the ionosphere, which can affect some of these technologies such as radar and GPs on our daily lives.”

The European Space Agency prepares the Probe-3, a pair of satellite designed to create artificial eclipses in space by blocking sunlight with precise alignment.

Nevertheless, despite these progress, Concorde’s 74 minutes were not defeated.

Keep the darkness a little longer

The 1973 mission made a two -term bridge: one is creativity with modified planes, and the other is now dominated by satellites and digital sensors. He has proven that people can expand their natural boundaries with the right aviation and science mixture.

By synchronizing the shadow of the Moon, the Concorde 001 gave the world the longest look at a solar eclipse. Half a century later, the record is still valid and continues to chase the biggest eclipse so far for many astronomers.