“The five experiments all succeeded, but none of them revolutionized our understanding of the corona,” he says in a disarmingly honest way about the flight’s immediate impact. “They all played their role in the normal progression of scientific knowledge, but there were no extraordinary results, it has to be said.” //

Léna doubts their incredible flight will ever be repeated. Today, space-based satellites that can watch the sun 24/7 and create permanent artificial eclipses have revolutionized our understanding of the nearest star to Earth—although observing eclipses on Earth is still useful for astronomy. //

“At the time, our knowledge of the solar corona was very very limited,” explains Léna. “Today we have far less need for eclipse flights from a scientific point of view because we can put missions like SOHO in space, which is doing essentially what we were aboard Concorde. Our observation methods have changed a lot, so I doubt if today we’d redo a mission like that.”

It’s often said that scientific inquiry leads to innovation, but the Concorde experiment is a reminder that sometimes innovation offers wild, unexpected dividends to science. Today, the exact plane that chased the eclipse in 1973 sits as a permanent exhibit at Le Bourget Air and Space Museum, complete with the special roof portholes and the eclipse mission logo on its fuselage. Léna, John Beckman and other engineers and astronomers were present for the 2013 unveiling, along with the late pilot André Turcat