* Astronomy

T minus 7 hours
Rita has been downgraded to a category 3 storm.



THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE
Category Five: 249kph (155mph)
Category Four: 210-249kph (131-155mph)
Category Three: 178-209kmh (111-130mph)
Category Two: 154-177kmh (96-110mph)
Category One: 119-153kmh (74-95mph)

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image at 12:10 p.m., U.S. Eastern time on September 21, 2005.


Expand (3.25Mb)

At the time this image was acquired, Rita had winds of 220 kilometres per hour (140 miles per hour) with gusts to 270 kph (170 mph).
Within a few hours, the storm intensified to a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 265 kph (165 mph).
Rita is the second Category 5 storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The first was Hurricane Katrina.

Sea Temperature

Hurricane Rita has just been upgraded to a category 5 storm, with wind speeds of 240 km/hour.

-- Edited by Blobrana at 22:19, 2005-09-21

NASA has closed the agency’s Johnson Space Centre (JSC) in Houston, and handed over ISS operation to Russian space centres.
About 3,000 civil servants and up to 12,000 contractors work at JSC.

Current projections predict Rita will hit the Texas coast between Houston and Corpus Christi late on Friday or early Saturday.