Here's what Hurricane Dorian looks like from space.
As Hurricane Dorian pummels the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast, NASA satellites and space station astronauts are keeping an eye on the epic storm from space.
In the gallery below, you can see how Dorian strengthened from a tropical storm into a dangerous Category 5 hurricane (opens in new tab) during the last week of August. The hurricane has since been downgraded to a Category 2 storm (as of Sept. 3), and it's currently crawling northward near the east coast of Florida. It's not yet clear where the storm will make landfall (opens in new tab) next, but it appears to be heading for North and South Carolina.
The NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP (opens in new tab) satellite captured this image of Tropical Storm Dorian on Aug. 26, 2019. At the time, the tropical storm was approaching the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean Sea.
(Image credit: NOAA)
NOAA's GOES-East satellite spotted Tropical Storm Dorian over the Caribbean Sea on Aug. 27, 2019. At the time, it was approaching Puerto Rico (opens in new tab) and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.
(Image credit: NASA Worldview/EOSDIS/NASA)
NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of Dorian on Aug. 28, 2019 at at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT), shortly before the tropical storm strengthened into a hurricane (opens in new tab).
NASA's GOES-16 weather satellite (opens in new tab) acquired data for this natural-color image of Hurricane Dorian on Aug. 29, 2019 at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). Hurricane Dorian was a Category 1 storm at the time, and it strengthened to a Category 2 later that night.
(Image credit: NASA)
This photograph was shot by an astronaut at the International Space Station on Aug. 29, 2019 at 1:12 p.m. EDT (1712 GMT), when the Category 1 hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 85 miles (135 km) per hour.
(Image credit: AstroDrewMorgan/Twitter )
NASA astronaut Drew Morgan took this photo of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Aug. 29, 2019, as the storm traveled across the Caribbean north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
(Image credit: CIRA/NOAA)
Hurricane Dorian's eye is clearly visible from space in this view from NOAA's GOES-East satellite, taken on Aug. 31, 2019. At the time, Dorian was a Category 4 hurricane (opens in new tab).
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this view of Category 4 Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station (opens in new tab) on Aug. 31, 2019. "Staring into the eye of the storm," he wrote on Twitter.
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 1, 2019.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of Hurricane Dorian on Sept. 1, 2019 at 2:05 p.m. EDT (1805 GMT), when it was a Category 5 storm (opens in new tab). The eye of the storm was directly over the island of Great Abaco in the northern Bahamas.
(Image credit: NOAA)
The eye of Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm, dominates this view from NOAA's GOES-East satellite as the storm approached the Abaco Islands in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 1, 2019.
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 1, 2019.
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this close-up view of Hurricane Dorian (opens in new tab) from the International Space Station on Sept. 1, 2019.
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this close-up view of the eye of Hurricane Dorian as seen from the International Space Station on Sept. 1, 2019.
(Image credit: ESA)
An image from the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite features Hurricane Dorian as it pummels the Bahamas as a Category 4 storm, on Sept. 2, 2019 at 11:16 a.m. EDT (15:16 GMT).
(Image credit: Astro_Christina/Twitter)
NASA astronaut Christina Koch captured this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch shared this photo of Hurricane Dorian as seen from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.
(Image credit: Astro_Christina/Twitter)
NASA astronaut Christina Koch shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.
(Image credit: Astro_Christina/Twitter)
NASA astronaut Christina Koch captured this photo of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.
(Image credit: AstroHague/Twitter)
NASA astronaut Nick Hague shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019. "You can feel the power of the storm when you stare into its eye from above," Hague tweeted (opens in new tab).
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano tweeted (opens in new tab)this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano took this photo of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 3, 2019. "Dorian, its majestic power visible even as we fly away," the astronaut tweeted (opens in new tab).
(Image credit: astro_luca/Twitter)
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 3, 2019. "Dorian in its fully mature stage," he tweeted (opens in new tab).
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA)
NASA used imagery captured by Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites on Sept. 2, 2019, to produce this flood map of the Bahamas (opens in new tab). The flooded areas are indicated in light blue.
(Image credit: NASA/Twitter)
As Hurricane Dorian churned closer to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, 120 members of the "Ride Out Team" reported to the Launch Control Center "to monitor and mitigate possible damage to spaceflight hardware," NASA tweeted (opens in new tab) along with this photo, on Sept. 2.
(Image credit: NASA/Twitter)
A NASA employee camps out inside the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida during Hurricane Dorian. "Meet Madi: She's riding out #HurricaneDorian in our Launch Control Center," KSC tweeted (opens in new tab) Sept. 2. "Once its safe to go out, this industrial hygienist and her team immediately do a post storm hazard analysis at KSC."
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
