As the East Coast prepares for Hurricane Irene to strike this weekend, NASA satellites have captured Hurricane Irene's track since it began as a tropical storm far out in the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have seen the tropical storm, which began in the Atlantic Ocean, moving toward the U.S. East Coast and captured a series of photos and videos using the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-13) satellite.

Mike Fossum, a NASA astronaut, said Hurricane Irene looks terrifying from above.

We saw a big change in the structure of the storm over the several days that we've watched her, especially yesterday, Fossum told Space.com.

Expected to begin in the Carolinas, the category two storm is predicted to begin on Saturday, relentlessly plowing its way up to coast towards Long Island, where the Hurricane Irene track could possibly take a landfall.

Here is an animation of the Hurricane Irene track, sped up using infrared and visible frames of data from the GOES-13 satellite and squeezed down to 36 seconds.