NASA is streaming live views of Hurricane Helene today (as it approaches the U.S. Gulf Coast, where it is expected to make landfall as a devastating storm, and you can watch it live online to track Helene’s progress.
Cameras on the International Space Station will stream live views of Hurricane Helene at 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT) for about 8 minutes as the ISS passes over the storm and the southeastern United States. You can watch the livestream on NASA’s YouTube feed or via the agency’s NASA+ streaming service, as well as in the window above.
“Hurricane Helene is predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s Northwest coast as a major hurricane, but NOAA’s National Weather Service is alerting communities that Helene’s flooding rainfall and high winds won’t be limited to the Gulf Coast and are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland,” officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned in a statement late Wednesday (Sept. 25).
“Helene is an unusually large storm, whose windfield extends as far as 275 miles from its center,” NOAA officials added. “Even well before landfall, heavy rainfall will begin in portions of the southeastern United States and will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachian region through Friday, where storm total rainfall amounts are forecast to be up to 18 inches.”
As of midday Thursday, Hurricane Helene was located about 255 miles (405 kilometers) southwest of Tampa, Florida with maximum sustained windspeeds of about 105 mph (165 kph), and was moving north northeast at a speed of abotu 14 mph (22 kph), according to an update from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center.
In addition to the storm and flooding threat posed by Helene, the storm has also forced NASA and SpaceX to postpone the planned launch of a new crew to the International Space Station.
SpaceX pushed its Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA to no earlier then Saturday (Sept. 28), back two days from Sept. 26, due to the storm’s approach. The mission will launch NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the station on a crew rotation, and will return to Earth in February with both men and Boeing Starliner astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.
Liftoff is currently scheduled for 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT) on Sept. 26.
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