Figure 1- Photograph by astronaut Frank Culbertson from the International Space Station showing the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. From NASA and in the public domain.

Thursday marked the thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 Attack on the World Trade Center.  I came upon this amazing photograph of the event taken by then NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson. Culbertson was the only American not present on the planet that September day.  He was ~ 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth in the, then under construction, International Space Station with two Russian cosmonauts. He saw the huge column of smoke streaming from Lower Manhattan, where the Twin Towers fell and captured both video and still photographs of site from space for NASA.

Culbertson recalls his call to the ground that morning to give the results of some physical exams to his flight surgeon at Mission Control Houston, Steve Hart, and was told, “Frank, we’re not having a very good day down here on Earth.”

Culbertson saw that the space station was about to pass over New England. So he grabbed his camera and positioned himself to have a clear view of New York City. Later, Culbertson was also able to see the damage to the Pentagon. Ironically, his good friend and U.S. Naval Academy classmate Charles “Chic” Burlingame was the pilot of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that struck the Pentagon.

“Every orbit we kept trying to see more of what was happening,” Culbertson said. “One of the most startling effects was that within about two orbits, all of the contrails that are normally crisscrossing the United States has disappeared because they had grounded all the airplanes and there was nobody else flying in U.S. airspace — except for one airplane that was leaving a contrail from the central U.S. toward Washington, and that was Air Force One headed back to D.C. with President Bush. It was a very sobering time for us.”