International Space Station photobombs solar eclipse

NASA astronauts pull off one of the the world's - and space's - most impressive photobombs from orbit

The International Space Station is silhouetted against the sun during a partial solar eclipse as seen from Ross Lake, Northern Cascades National Park, in Washington. Bill Ingalls / NASA via AP.

In what might become known as one of the greatest space photobombs of all time, the solar eclipse that gripped the US on Monday may have been upstaged.

As Americans reached for their sunglasses to look to the skies, the International Space Station glided across the sun, resulting in a spectacular show-stealing from the manned spacecrafts' perfectly timed 'photobomb'.

The craft, carrying six personnel on board, passed the sun at five miles per second. Its silhouette was caught by the NASA cameras as they trailed towards the spectacular event.

The crew, who make up Expedition 52, consist of NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, Jack Fischer, and Randy Bresnik; Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy; and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Bresnik mused about the phenomenon's likeness to something out of the Marvel universe to his 13,000 Twitter followers, wondering if the "earth had come into alignment with Asgard".

Nespoli tweeted several shots of the eclipse's shadow.

Expedition 52 began in June 2017 and ends in September 2017, during the expedition researchers will display increasingly efficient solar arrays, explore the physics of neutron stars, scrutinise a new drug to fight osteoporosis and observe the negative effects of continued exposure to microgravity on the heart.