Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
On September 11, 2001, there was only one American astronaut in space, on the still brand-new International Space Station. It was Frank Culbertson. The ISS trajectory coincidentally passed over New York first and then further south, providing Culbertson and his two cosmonaut colleagues with unique views of the tragedy unfolding on the ground.
It was Flight Surgeon Stephen Hart who had to break the news to Culbertson. At the time, the ISS was not getting live internet like it does today. The NASA astronaut reported his disbelief at the event and checked the world map, noting that the ISS was going to be soon traveling over New York, where the Twin Towers had just been hit.
“I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera. It happened to be a video camera, and I was looking south from the window of Michael’s cabin,” Culbertson wrote in an open letter, shared on NASA’s website. “Michael” is cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. The second cosmonaut was Vladimir Dezhurov.
“The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower. How horrible…”
The ISS goes around the Earth every 92 minutes. Its orbit shifts with respect to specific locations on the ground, so while a spot might get multiple views of the ISS in a day or a week from space, a location might only be glanced at.
“It was pretty difficult to think about work after that, though we had some to do, but on the next orbit we crossed the US further south,” Culbertson continued in his letter.
“All three of us were working one or two cameras to try to get views of New York or Washington. There was haze over Washington, but no specific source could be seen. It all looked incredible from two to three hundred miles away. I can’t imagine the tragic scenes on the ground.”
One of the things that Culbertson reported as striking in the aftermath was the lack of contrails over the United States. All air traffic in and out of the US was grounded in the aftermath of the attacks. The only flight for the rest of that day was Air Force One taking President George W. Bush back to Washington, DC.
Washington was one of the sites of the attack, with the Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacking American Airlines flight 77 and flying it into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. Culbertson knew the captain of that flight.
“It turned out that the command captain of that flight was a classmate of mine from the US Naval Academy named [Charles] Chic Burlingame. He and I had both been a major. We both flew F4s. We knew each other very well from school and from flying; and he, of course, lost his life in that part of the attack. And it became very personal to me at that point,” Culbertson said in an interview.
A fourth plane, United 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after the crew and passengers fought back.
Culbertson’s expedition lasted for two more months, coming back to Earth on December 15, 2001.
"I hope that the people responsible are caught and brought to justice as soon as possible," Culbertson reportedly told Mission Control as he spoke to them on September 11 in real time.
"But first, our prayers and condolences to all involved. And I just wanted the folks to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space. I know it's very difficult for everybody in America right now, and I know folks are struggling very hard to deal with this and recover from it. But the country still looks good, and, for New Yorkers, your city still looks great from up here."
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