// ORBITAL LOGISTICS AND PROPULSION TERM
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event where one celestial body blocks the light from another, either partially or completely. This can happen when the Moon passes in front of the Sun, or Earth passes in front of the Moon.
TECHNICAL DEFINITION
An astronomical event occurring when one celestial body, such as a moon or planet, passes in front of another, temporarily obscuring its light, as seen from a third body, resulting in a solar or lunar eclipse.
BACKGROUND
Sierra Space Corporation is a privately held aerospace and space technologies company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, with additional facilities in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and a testing site at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The company makes spaceflight hardware for various applications across the industry.
READ MORE ON WIKIPEDIASYNONYMS & ALIASES
- Occultation
- Transit
- Shadow event
- Obscuration
USAGE NOTE
Solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth.
DEVELOPERS
Organizations developing technology related to Eclipse.
The primary U.S. space agency, which funds and conducts scientific research during solar eclipses. NASA utilizes sounding rockets, high-altitude balloons, and research aircraft to study the Sun's corona, the tenuous outer atmosphere that is only visible from Earth during a total solar eclipse.
A research laboratory that designs and builds spacecraft and instruments for NASA. APL leads the Parker Solar Probe mission, which flies through the Sun's corona to take direct measurements, providing data that complements observations made during eclipses.
An independent, nonprofit applied research and development organization. SwRI develops scientific instruments for space missions and conducts its own research, including flying instrumented research jets like the WB-57 during solar eclipses to make observations from above the clouds.
An intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration of space. ESA operates several solar missions, such as SOHO (with NASA) and Solar Orbiter, which use coronagraphs to create artificial eclipses to continuously monitor the Sun's corona.
An open-source software foundation that hosts the Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) project. Eclipse AADL is a modeling language extensively used in the aerospace and defense sectors for designing and analyzing the software and hardware architecture of mission-critical systems like avionics.
A manufacturer of spacecraft, components, and instruments for civil, commercial, and national security space missions. Ball has built numerous instruments for solar observation, including for missions like SOHO and STEREO, which are critical for understanding the phenomena studied during eclipses.
A U.S. federally funded research center that studies meteorology, climate science, and solar-terrestrial physics. Its High Altitude Observatory (HAO) develops advanced coronagraphs and other instruments to study the Sun's atmosphere, often deploying them during total solar eclipses.
An aerospace and defense technology company that builds advanced instruments for space applications. L3Harris developed the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) for the GOES-R series weather satellites, which includes solar viewing capabilities that contribute to heliophysics research.