A massive rip-roaring typhoon named Vongfong is currently making its way away across the Western Pacific and straight toward Japan. With winds peaking at 170 miles per hour, Super Typhoon Vongfong is the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.
"It's safe to say Vongfong is the strongest storm on earth since Haiyan last year," Michael Lowry, a storm specialist for The Weather Channel, recently told NBC News. Typhoon Haiyan was the devastating storm that hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing more than 6,000 people.
The typhoon is expected to pass over a number of U.S. military islands over the weekend and make landfall over Japan by Monday. As of Thursday morning, the storm was already blasting 50-foot waves against the shore of Okinawa, home to Kadena Air Base and some 24,000 U.S. and Japanese military personnel and defense contractors.
But while the view from sea level is grey and ominous, Vongfong looks serenely impressive from the peaceful quiet of space. Supplementing the satellite images, which show the typhoon's frightening size from bird's-eye view, is NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, who photographed the storm out the window of the International Space Station. The image offers a unique perspective of the storm -- a slightly more horizontal view of the massive spinning weather system and its perfect eye.