ESA's Proba-3 mission recorded a double eclipse on 12 August 2026, hours before the Moon's shadow swept over parts of Europe during a total solar eclipse, the agency reported on 14 August 2026.

The mission's two spacecraft are designed to create eclipses themselves: aligned about 60 000 km above Earth, the Occulter craft acts as an artificial Moon for the Coronagraph craft, which then has an uninterrupted view of the Sun's corona. According to ESA, images from the coronagraph instrument ASPIICS showed the Moon crossing the mission's field of view over three hours that morning, covering the solar disc for 8 min 40 s as the spacecraft continued to hold their own artificial eclipse. Because Proba-3 was closer to the Moon than Earth was, the double eclipse lasted much longer than the maximum 2 min 18 s of totality just off the coast of Iceland.

During the event, ESA says ASPIICS was largely free of parasitic light usually produced by diffraction at the edge of the Occulter, letting scientists calibrate the instrument's optical performance and briefly observe the corona. ESA describes such a double eclipse as a once-in-a-lifetime event for Proba-3, which is expected to see two partial eclipses during the next on-ground total eclipses, on 2 August 2027 and 22 July 2028.