Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida's Gulf Coast overnight Thursday (Sept. 26) with satellites capturing striking views of the colossal storm, which has caused widespread flooding and power outages affecting millions of people.
Hurricane Helene made landfall as a deadly Category 4 storm. It struck Florida's Big Bend coast, drenching the state and neighboring Georgia, as well as North and South Carolina, leaving an estimated four million people without power, according to the New York Times. The storm led to 19 deaths across three states, the Times reported.
Satellites operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA cameras on the International Space Station watched Helene as it made landfall. The storm has since weakened into a tropical storm, but it's still deluging the region with intense rainfall and winds.
"Helen producing historic and catastrophic flooding over portions of the southeast and southern Appalachians," officials with the National Hurricane Center wrote in an update today. As of 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), Tropical Storm Helene was located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Bryson City, North Carolina with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph). When it made landfall late Thursday, it had maximum winds of 140 mph (225 kph), the National Hurricane Center reported.
An awe-inspiring look at Hurricane Helene and it's convective eye from earlier today in this high-resolution satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/mDmJ4l5HAySeptember 26, 2024
NASA tracked the then-hurricane Helene throughout Thursday, broadcasting live views of the storm from the International Space Station (ISS) during two flyovers of the U.S. Southeast during the day. ISS cameras revealed a vast storm with a clear eye visible to astronauts living aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The weather impacts of Helene forced NASA and SpaceX to delay the planned launch of their Crew-9 astronaut mission to the ISS from Florida's Space Coast on the Atlantic side of the state. That mission, which will ferry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the station, was scheduled for Sept. 26, with SpaceX pushing it back to no earlier than Saturday (Sept. 28) due to weather concerns.
SpaceX pulled the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for the mission off its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to protect it in a hangar during the storm. By midday Friday (Sept. 27), the rocket was back atop its pad at Space Launch Complex 40. Crew-9 will be SpaceX's first crewed flight to launch from the pad.
"With Hurricane Helene out of the way, Crew-9 is back outside at pad 40," SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
With Hurricane Helene out of the way, Crew-9 is back outside at pad 40. Shown below are two of the critical teams that support launch at the Cape. Both the Safety and Pad teams work 24/7, 365 to keep the machine running and our team safe. A huge thank you to the men and women of… pic.twitter.com/lmXSShuVoYSeptember 27, 2024
Officials at NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center also braced for the storm, but resumed normal operations as of midday Friday.
Kennedy has returned to normal operations following Hurricane #Helene.NASA’s SpaceX #Crew9 mission is targeting launch at no earlier than 1:17 p.m. EDT Saturday, Sept. 28, from Space Launch Complex-40. pic.twitter.com/9mcDe3J6YcSeptember 27, 2024
"Kennedy has returned to normal operations following Hurricane Helene," NASA officials said in an X update.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Crew-9 astronauts for NASA on Sept. 28 at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1517 GMT). You can watch the Crew-9 launch live online, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 9:10 a.m. EDT (1310 GMT).
