Space Station Cameras Capture Views of Hurricane Irene From Orbit

Aboard the International Space Station, an Expedition 28 crew member captured views of intensifying Hurricane Irene from an altitude of 225 miles at 3:33 p.m. EDT on Aug. 22, 2011, as the tropical system passed to the north of Hispaniola. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting a track that would take Irene near to or east of the Florida peninsula as a major hurricane on Friday with a possible landfall along the southeastern United States on Saturday. As of 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, Irene was packing winds of 80 miles an hour, but growing stronger, moving west-northwest at 13 miles an hour.

A Two-Minute Visual History of the Spacewalk

If there is a defining activity for NASA’s Space Shuttle program, it is the spacewalk, or extra-vehicular activity. 160 spacewalks were made in the assembly of the ISS alone. There’s something about the image, too, of a human high above the Earth, clambering around on a piece of machinery whizzing through space. In this video, we take a two-minute tour of the history of the EVA from the first during the Gemini program to the last spacewalk, which occurred Wednesday in low-earth orbit.

All footage is courtesy of NASA and the Internet Archive. Some of it has been sped up.

(Source: The Atlantic)

Earth’s Nighttime View from Endeavour

The docked space shuttle Endeavour, backdropped by a nighttime view of Earth and a starry sky are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 28 crew member on the International Space Station, on May 28, 2011.

© Copyright 2011 NASA. All rights reserved.

Atlantis Approaches ISS

A view photographed from the International Space Station in 2007 shows the Space Shuttle Atlantis above the Earth, as the two spacecraft were nearing their link-up in Earth orbit.

© Copyright 2007 NASA. All rights reserved.

Rabaul Volcano Wakes Up

Near the end of the mission, the crew aboard space shuttle Discovery was able to document the beginning of the second day of activity of the Rabaul volcano, on the east end of New Britain. On the morning of Sept. 19, 1994, two volcanic cones on the opposite sides of the 6-kilometer sea crater had begun to erupt with very little warning. Discovery flew just east of the eruption roughly 24 hours after it started and near the peak of its activity.

© Copyright 1994 NASA. All rights reserved.

Columbia’s Reentry

In this image from a NASA video, the silhouette of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander for mission STS-80, Kenneth Cockrall, is visible against the front windows of the Space Shuttle during reentry on December 7, 1996. The orange glow in the window is from ionizing atoms in the atmosphere caused by the friction of air against the Shuttle’s surface during reentry.

© Copyright 1996 NASA/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

ISS Beginnings

The fist two components of the International Space Station are joined together on December 6, 1998. The Russian-built FGB, also called Zarya, nears the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S.-built Node 1, also called Unity (foreground).

© Copyright 1998 NASA/JSC. All rights reserved.

Watch Iceland’s Volcano Grímsvötn Explode from Space

The world didn’t break out in earthquakes but Grímsvötn, a volcano in Iceland, exploded over the weekend. The volcano sent a plume of ash and smoke nearly 8 miles high. Um, that’s so huge you can see it from space.

The pictures were captured with the Metreosat-9 satellite by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. It’s like a pimple popping on the Earth’s face. There’s also a GIF of the images here. [CIMSS via The Atlantic]