Montana State students to help NASA science soar during 2026 total solar eclipse

BOZEMAN - Each total solar eclipse - when daytime skies darken and the sun briefly reveals its outer atmosphere, or corona - presents new opportunities to better understand our star, its influence on Earth and the solar system as a whole.

A team of eight Montana State University students and ballooning flight director Michael Walach, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Technology Education in MSU's College of Agriculture, are poised to take advantage of that opportunity next week in Spain, where a total solar eclipse will occur just before sunset. The students are members of MSU's NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, led by Angela Des Jardins, director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium and associate research professor in the Department of Physics in MSU's College of Letters and Science. NEBP teams from several U.S. universities will visit Iceland and Spain to launch scientific balloons before, during and after the eclipse.

Des Jardins said she has been contacted by media outlets from all over the world, including Scientific American, Science News, CNN, BBC, the Australian educational science YouTube channel Veritasium and the French newspaper Le Nouvel Obs. All want to know more about NEBP and the experiments the students will be conducting.

"It's thrilling that our five teams, including 10 members from MSU, are extending our eclipse ballooning achievements to Iceland and Spain," Des Jardins said. "This will be an unforgettable experience for the participants and a powerful demonstration of MSU's world-class capabilities."

In Spain, the MSU students will lead teams from the University of North Florida and Connecticut's universities of Bridgeport and Hartford in launching balloons equipped with 360-degree cameras to image the eclipse shadow from above. The balloons also will carry instruments designed to measure levels of atmospheric ozone, which requires sunlight to form. Similar balloon experiments showed that ozone decreased during totality, the maximum phase of a total eclipse, in April 2024. Scientists wonder whether there will be differences with this eclipse, particularly since it happens later in the day and during a different season.

In Iceland, NEBP teams from the University of Idaho and University of Kentucky will launch balloons to study how the eclipse affects Earth's boundary layer, the part of the atmosphere that touches the ground. The thickness of the boundary layer changes depending on factors such as surface temperature and moisture in the air. Previous balloon flights during solar eclipses in October 2023 and April 2024 showed that the boundary layer decreased in thickness with clear skies but didn't where skies were cloudy. Scientists wonder whether that will be different in Iceland in 2026, because changes in the boundary layer are driven by the day-night cycle. In Iceland in August, the days are long and nights are short, so the nighttime influences might not be as strong as in 2023 or 2024, meaning the boundary layer might be more resistant to collapse.

In the U.S., the eclipse will be partially visible in parts of Alaska, some northeastern states, and in some Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Nowhere in the U.S. will experience totality.

NASA will stream the eclipse live at https://www.nasa.gov/live on Aug. 12 beginning at 11:15 a.m. MDT.