NASA Looks Ahead to October’s Annular Solar Eclipse

A partial eclipse that will be visible over parts of the United States in mid-October could offer NASA a rare chance to study the Sun’s effects on the Earth. 

The Oct. 14 annular eclipse will occur as the moon will be at its furthest point from Earth while it comes between our planet and its star. Because of that distance, the Sun won’t be totally blotted out, but will rather appear as a fiery ring around the moon.

The eclipse will be visible to some degree across the contiguous United States but the full effect will only be visible for a narrow swatch cutting through Oregon to Texas.

NASA will broadcast the eclipse live on its website. 

The Sun being blocked presents an opportunity to learn more about how the star affects the Earth’s ionosphere and gravity, as well as temperature.

Three rockets will be launched into suborbital flight from New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range which will measure electrical and magnetic fields as well as particle distribution in the atmosphere. The agency will also launch sensor-laden balloons in every state to try and pick up some of that data. 

“You're trying to really quantify the relationship between that radiation that's coming in, and how the ionosphere must be responding to that,” said NASA heliophysics program scientist Madhulika Guhathakurta. “This allows us to really understand that impact of solar radiation.” 

Some of the experiments involve recruiting civilians: A contest run by HAMSci, a group of scientifically minded ham-radio operators, will help gather data on how the eclipse will affect radio waves traveling through the Earth’s atmosphere.  

“We have lots of satellites, but currently these observations are unattainable from any other labs or space,” said Guhathakurta.  

The agency is also hoping to gain precious data from the Eclipse Soundscapes Project, a citizen science initiative aimed at recreating a 100-year-old study on how eclipses affect wildlife. 

Peg Luce, acting division director of NASA’s Heliophysics department, said the eclipse will kick off the “heliophysics big year,” culminating on Christmas Eve, when the agency’s Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach to the Sun. 

There is a chance that NASA will be among the government agencies affected by a possible government shutdown, but a spokesperson for the agency said it was too soon to speculate on what that shutdown would mean for eclipse experiments.