Featured Image Credit: @dominickmatthew / X / Peter Blottman Photography / Getty
One astronaut managed to get an incredible sight of Hurricane Milton from space.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick got a view of Hurricane Milton through the window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, which is docked to the International Space Station (ISS).
He observed as the hurricane was churning over the Gulf of Mexico as it headed towards Florida’s west coast.
Dominick shared the photo on X, captioning: "We flew over Hurricane Milton about 90 minutes ago. Here is the view out the Dragon Endeavour window.
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"Expect lots of images from this window as this is where I’m sleeping while we wait to undock and return to Earth."
We flew over Hurricane Milton about 90 minutes ago. Here is the view out the Dragon Endeavour window. Expect lots of images from this window as this is where I’m sleeping while we wait to undock and return to Earth.
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 8, 2024
Timelapse coming in a separate post.
1/6400 sec, f8, ISO 500 pic.twitter.com/zkhJdTlag7
The post received over 12 million views on the social media platform after just being shared yesterday (October 8).
He later commented on the original post saying that the picture was taken as part of a timelapse.
Endeavour is currently flying SpaceX's Crew-8 mission for NASA.
Back in early March, the capsule brought Dominick and fellow NASA astronauts Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, as well as Alexander Grebenkin of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, to the orbiting lab.
Crew-8 is wrapping up its mission and was supposed to return to Earth on October 7, but Hurricane Milton pushed that back.
The storm is powering its way through the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, churning up the waters of Endeavour's planned splashdown area.
As a result, NASA and SpaceX have delayed Crew-8's undocking until at least October 13.
Milton is a Category 4 hurricane, the second-most powerful level.
It's expected to hit Florida's Gulf Coast, near Tampa and St. Petersburg, late on October 9 as a Category 3 storm, according to The Associated Press.
Milton will then continue moving east across Florida, likely affecting the state's Atlantic coast too.
Viewers shared their amazement at the hurricane from above.
"The earth looks so flat from up there . . .," one user commented.
"Wow, this is phenomenal! The vastness of the hurricane from space is absolutely staggering," another added.
One person referenced the 2004 sci-fi action movie: "This looks like the storm in the Day After Tomorrow."
Someone else said: "That may be one of the greatest pictures of a hurricane ever. Thank you"
The storm has already delayed NASA's planned launch of the $5 billion Europa Clipper mission from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, which was supposed to happen on October 10.
A new target date will be announced once the storm has passed.
