The scale of Hurricane Milton, the Category 5 storm currently predicted to make landfall as a Category 3 storm along the west-central coast of Florida late on Wednesday or early Thursday morning, has been captured in footage from the International Space Station (ISS).
Several angles of the hurricane were captured, by cameras attached to the space station itself, as well as from SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour currently docked with the ISS.
“External cameras on the International Space Station captured new views of category 4 Hurricane Milton at 9:37 a.m. EDT October 8 as it churned across the Gulf of Mexico, headed for an expected landfall around Tampa, Florida in the early morning hours Oct. 10,” NASA explains of the footage below. “As of 8 a.m. EDT on Oct. 8, Milton was packing winds of 145 miles an hour [233 kilometers per hour] and strengthening as it moved in an east-northeast direction toward the west coast of Florida.”
Footage has also been captured from inside the storm, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Hurricane Hunters. NOAA regularly makes flights inside hurricanes to monitor them and make predictions about their progress. Using two aircraft – nicknamed “Kermit” and “Miss Piggy” – the hurricane specialists take data from inside the eye of the hurricane itself.
While the storm is expected to cause devastation as it hits land, it is also posing smaller problems for astronauts on board the ISS.
The space station, currently overcrowded after problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft left astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore stranded on board until 2025, was due to send two crew members back to Earth this week. As the storm rages below, NASA have postponed the return of Crew-8.
“NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 3:05 a.m. EDT Sunday, Oct. 13, for the undocking of the Crew-8 mission from the International Space Station due to weather conditions and potential impacts from Hurricane Milton across the Florida peninsula,” the agency explained in an update. “Mission managers continue to monitor conditions, with the next weather briefing planned for 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 11.”
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin will have to wait a little longer to return to Earth.