Linked shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station just flew 214 miles above Hurricane Dean, giving spacewalking astronauts from the United States and Canada an extraterrestrial view of the monster storm.
Working side-by-side on the outer hull of the station's U.S. Destiny laboratory, Endeavour mission specialist Dave Williams and outpost flight engineer Clay Anderson spotted the storm as it churned through the Caribbean Sea just south of Hispaniola.
The astronauts were rigging up an antenna system when Endeavour mission specialist Tracy Caldwell, who was orchestrating the spacewalk from inside the joined shuttle-station complex, gave Williams and Anderson a heads up.
"Hey guys, I don't want to totally distract you, but you are coming up on a hurricane below, if you want to stop and look," Caldwell said.
"Oh wow!" said Williams, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut making his third spacewalk. "Hoo, man. Yeah, you can't miss that."
Said Anderson" "Holy smoke."
"That's impressive," Williams added.
Williams said he could see the eye of the storm, now a Category 4 hurricane packing sustained winds of 150 mph. The storm is expected to strengthen into a deadly Category 5 hurricane before it makes landfall in northeast Mexico next Thursday.
Concerned that the storm could turn north and threaten NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, agency managers are considering bringing Endeavour and its astronauts home next Tuesday -- a day earlier than planned.
NASA's Mission Management Team will convene at Johnson Space Center in Houston at the top of the hour to determine whether Endeavour's astronauts should depart the station early Sunday.
The joined crews of the shuttle and station are proceeding as if managers will order up an early departure from the outpost. They'll gather in the U.S. Destiny lab around 4:45 p.m. EDT to bid adieu. Hatches between the spacecraft are to be closed at 5 p.m. and mission managers will hold a news briefing about that time.
You can watch it all here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the Mission Webcast headline to launch our NASA TV viewer. Start-up time is about 20 seconds.
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