CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A packed Italian moving van was stowed back in shuttle Discovery Sunday as 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station got a glimpse of nature's wrath from high above the planet.
Rookie astronaut Patrick Forrester grappled the cylindrical shipping container with Discovery's robot arm and then moved it from a station berthing port to a shuttle cargo bay cradle about 3:15 p.m. EDT (1915 GMT).
Filled with almost two tons of luggage, science experiments, surplus gear and garbage, the so-called Leonardo module will be flown back to Earth Wednesday along with an outgoing station crew that has been aboard the outpost since March.
"Leonardo is now ready for the trip home," NASA flight commentator James Hartsfield reported from the agency's Mission Control Center in Houston.
The final push to pack up the module went so smoothly that the joined shuttle-station crews had time to survey nature's fury from a perch 246 miles (394 kilometers) above Earth.
With Discovery and the station soaring high over the Caribbean Sea, the astronauts and cosmonauts snapped pictures of Tropical Storm Chantal as it churned south of the tiny Cayman Islands on its westward trek toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
"We're going to get the cameras out and we're going to shoot up Chantal today," Discovery astronaut Daniel Barry told Mission Control.On the verge of becoming a full-fledged hurricane, the swirling mass of thunderstorms was generating winds that topped out at 70 mph (112 kilometers per hour) as it zeroed in on an area that included the Mexican resort town of Cancun and neighboring Belize.
The astronauts and cosmonauts also spied tremendous fountain of ash spewing from Mount Etna on Sicily, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The most active volcano in Europe erupted in July, sending out a river of molten lava and a wafting cloud of ash that still stretches to the upper reaches of the planet's atmosphere.
"We have been watching Mount Etna, and had some spectacular views today of just thundering, billowing clouds of smoke shooting up out of the volcano and then hitting the troposphere and flattening out like a pancake," Barry said.
"It was really spectacular."
"That's great, Dan," Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean replied from Mission Control. "You'll have to go to Italy when you get back to Earth."
Launched Aug. 10, Discovery and four astronauts ferried a new crew to the station along with the Leonardo module and an estimated 7,400 pounds (3,330 kilograms) of food, clothing, research apparatus and science experiments.
Some 3,700 pounds (1,665 kilograms) of carry-on baggage, excess equipment and trash was loaded into the cargo carrier before it was sealed up and stowed in the shuttle.
Capping an eight-day stay at the international outpost, Discovery's crew is scheduled to pull out of the station just before 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) Monday, heading off on a two-day trip back to terra firma.
Hitching a ride: Outgoing station commander Yuri Usachev and flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss, who boarded the outpost in March and have already spent 164 days in space.
The shuttle is due back at Kennedy Space Center at 12:48 p.m. EDT (1648 GMT) Wednesday. New station skipper Frank Culbertson and his two cosmonaut colleagues - Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin - will remain in space until Dec. 9.
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