To see totality twice in two spaceflights is astonishing, but Aldrin has a far easier flight plan in mind for August 21st’s eclipse. “We didn't expect it, and we struggled to get a picture of it, but we saw it.” The sole usable image of totality shows the Moon as a dark disk between the spacecraft and the Sun. NASA’s Apollo 11 archive includes 43 exposures of the solar corona, almost all of them dark or extremely faint, but only one clearly shows the halo around one side of the Moon. The Moon is the dark disc between the spacecraft and the Sun. This photograph of the solar corona was taken from the Apollo 11 spacecraft during trans-lunar coast and prior to lunar orbit insertion. “Our journey to the Moon was literally in its shadow,” Aldrin said. (Image credit: Getty) Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins' work was more. On July 19, 1969, prior to lunar orbit insertion, the Moon - appearing larger than the Sun - eclipsed the star for some time. Buzz Aldrin was the second human to set foot on the moon because NASA felt Neil Armstrong's seniority meant he should go first. ![]() This was no regular total solar eclipse - it was one that the Apollo 11 crew accidentally created for themselves. “We had a dark image of the Moon with the Sun behind it, and we saw the corona.” “We traveled in the shadow of the Moon,” Aldrin said. Aldrin was lucky enough to experience a second, much longer totality in 1969, as the historic Apollo 11 spacecraft traveled toward its landing target. Of course, total solar eclipses happen all the time in space – you just have to be in the right place at the right time. He photographed totality, as well as a partial phase. Lovell reported seeing it “right on the money at 16:01:44” according to NASA. So just 16 hours into their mission, during the spacecraft's 12th orbit around Earth, Aldrin and Lovell saw an eight-second eclipse. That total solar eclipse was also observed on the ground in Peru and Brazil. At the last minute, NASA asked the astronauts to make a slight orbital maneuver to put themselves into a position over the Galapagos Islands, where they caught a brief glimpse of totality. On November 11, 1966, Aldrin and fellow astronaut Jim Lovell had just arrived in orbit in Gemini XII. ![]() Crew members for the flight were astronauts James A. A Brief Solar Eclipse from Gemini XII Partial solar eclipse as seen from the Gemini XII spacecraft during it 12th orbit around Earth. It turns out that, although he only went on two space missions during his illustrious NASA career, Aldrin saw totality from both of them: once from near Earth and once from cis-lunar space. But when I asked him about it at ShareSpace Foundation’s Apollo 11 Gala last week, he told me all about seeing the solar corona from Apollo 11. It will be Buzz Aldrin’s third eclipse, part of a unique collection that includes not just one, but two totalities seen from space.Īs something of an eclipse obsessive, I knew Aldrin had photographed a total solar eclipse on his Gemini XII mission in 1966. Buzz Aldrin experienced totality twice in space - once on Gemini XII, then on Apollo 11.Īmerica will experience totality on August 21st as the Moon’s shadow races across 14 mainland states.
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