NASA Sees Hurricane Dorian from Space Station (Video)

NASA is keeping a close watch on Hurricane Dorian as it barrels across the Atlantic Ocean on its way toward Florida, and now the agency has spotted in the storm from the International Space Station.

A video of Hurricane Dorian captured today (Aug. 29) from the space station shows the Category 1 storm as it appeared at 1:05 p.m. EDT (1705 GMT). At the time, the storm was north of Puerto Rico and moving north across the Atlantic Ocean. The space station, meanwhile, was flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above Cuba.

Dorian currently has wind speeds of near 85 mph (140 km/h) and is forecast to strengthen into a major hurricane by Friday (Aug. 30), according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

NASA captured this view of Hurricane Dorian from a camera on the International Space Station on Aug. 29, 2019 as the storm passed over the Atlantic Ocean, north of Puerto Rico. — NASA captured this view of Hurricane Dorian from a camera on the International Space Station on Aug. 29, 2019, as the storm passed over the Atlantic Ocean, north of Puerto Rico. (Image credit: NASA)

"A west-northwestward motion is forecast to begin by Friday night and continue into the weekend," NHC officials said in an update. "On this track, Dorian should move over the Atlantic well east of the southeastern and central Bahamas today and on Friday, approach the northwestern Bahamas Saturday, and move near or over portions of the northwest Bahamas on Sunday."

Officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida are preparing for the the storm, just in case it makes landfall near the spaceport on Sunday (Sept. 1). Center officials are moving a 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Mobile Launcher tower into the Vehicle Assembly Building, a 52-story building once used to prepare NASA's Saturn V moon rockets and space shuttles for flight.

The many Earth-facing video cameras on the International Space Station are part of a fleet of space-based views NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are using to track Dorian from orbit. Both agencies are also using the GOES-East satellite, the Suomi NPP Earth-watching satellite and others to monitor the storm.

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Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.

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