For observers from Earth, the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, over a narrow strip of land from Mexico to Canada lasted about three minutes, but from space, it looked much larger and longer. A handful of astronauts and cosmonauts could watch the Moon’s shadow move across the face of the Earth for a long time. This was made possible by the fact that the ISS orbit has been changed many times over the past few months.
NASA has provided a video from the ISS, which contains unique footage of the total solar eclipse from space. For hundreds of thousands of years, people and their ancestors have observed this grandiose and frightening phenomenon from only one perspective. Man’s entry into space opened up another facet of this phenomenon, and it is right to look at any event from all possible angles – this is the only way science is created.
The next total eclipse over the United States will take place in 2044. NASA did not want to miss the opportunity to show people the passage of the moon’s shadow across the Earth right now. Perhaps in 2044, astronauts will be able to look at the new eclipse from an even more amazing perspective – from the territory of the lunar base created by that time.
However, in Europe, the total eclipse will occur much earlier – in 2026. It will be possible to observe it from Greenland, Iceland, Spain, and Portugal. But that’s another story.
