Frank Culbertson: Astronaut Who Saw the 9/11 Attacks From Space
Every year when September 11th passes in the United States, everyone reflects on where they were when they heard the news that the planes struck the towers of the World Trade Center. I wasn’t even a year old, but I still hear the story of where I was that day. I wasn’t dropped off at daycare like usual, instead, my dad stayed at home from work with me — both suffering from a cold. But there is one American whose story is vastly different from everyone else’s. Frank Culbertson was the only American not on Earth on September 11, 2001.
Along with two Russian cosmonauts, Frank Culbertson was hundreds of miles above Earth on the still-under-construction International Space Station when he called Steve Hart at Mission Control Houston to report the results of a physical exam. Immediately, Hart told him, “Frank, we’re not having a very good day down here on Earth.”
At the time, the astronauts aboard the space station did not yet have live television or internet. Culbertson checked their location and realized that they were about to pass over New York where the attacks took place. He grabbed a camera and moved to a window where he was able to see dark smoke very clearly covering the sky in New York coming from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
As the station continued orbiting, Culbertson and the others onboard tried to keep up with what was happening down on Earth. “Every orbit we kept trying to see more of what was happening. 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.”
Later, he could also see a “gash” in the side of the Pentagon. He would learn his good friend Charles “Chic” Burlingame, who was a classmate of his at the U.S. Naval Academy, was the pilot at takeoff on American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon. The two were both aeronautical engineering majors and played in the Academy’s Drum & Bugle Corps together. Culbertson had his trumpet aboard the ISS and played Taps upon hearing the news of his friend’s death.
Frank Culbertson logged 146 hours in space over 3 shuttle missions before he left NASA. Over the course of his life, he has received many honors and service awards. In 2010, Culbertson was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.
