NASA astronaut photographed smoke over New York during the September 11 attacks
International Space Station commander Frank Culbertson photographed a dense plume of smoke over New York, United States, from orbit on September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks. The image, taken from an altitude of about 400 kilometers above Earth, shows smoke drifting away from Manhattan. Live Science reports.
Photo from orbit
At the time of the attacks, Culbertson was the only American who was not on Earth. He flew over New York shortly after learning about the events in the United States and captured the smoke over lower Manhattan.
On September 11, members of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes. Two of them crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan; both 110-story buildings later collapsed. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, while the fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a total of 2,977 people were killed in the attacks.
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ISS crew observations
Culbertson noted that an unusual widening could be seen near the base of the smoke column in the photograph. In his view, this could indicate that the image was taken during or shortly after the collapse of the second tower.
The astronaut also learned that Charles Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon after being hijacked, had been his former classmate at flight school. During the ISS's next pass over the Pentagon, the crew saw significant damage to the building.
The Landsat 7 satellite also recorded on September 12, 2001, that smoke continued to rise over the Ground Zero area for at least 24 hours. Culbertson recalled that after planes were grounded in the United States, the usual contrails over the country disappeared. The exception was one trail that, according to him, was left by Air Force One carrying President George Bush as he returned to Washington.
