1973 Concorde eclipse flight

In May 1972, Pierre Léna, an astronomer with the Paris Observatory, met with French Concorde test pilot André Turcat over lunch at a restaurant at Toulouse Airport to propose his idea to view the 1973 eclipse from an aircraft.

[1] The aircraft flew in the lunar shadow over the Sahara including Mali, Nigeria and Niger, before landing in Fort-Lamy (present-day N'Djamena), in Chad.

[1] Infrared and optical cameras were installed in portholes in the plane's roof to capture the Sun's corona with less atmospheric interference than there would be from the ground.

[6] Léna and his team (Université Paris) focused their efforts on studying the F-corona (the outer part of the Sun's corona, made up of dust particles).

Liebenberg (University of California, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories) measured pulsations in light intensity, while Beckman (Queen Mary College) observed the far infrared emissions from the chromosphere.

[1][6] Though this event garnered wide and lasting media attention, solar researchers generally agree that the Concorde's flight has had limited scientific impact.

[3] Airborne eclipse chasing has been successfully attempted on other non-supersonic aircraft including a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (E-Flight 2019-MAX),[3] and a 2024 Gulfstream V jet.