NASA has shared a poignant letter from the only American not on Earth when 9/11 happened.
Space Station astronaut Frank Culbertson penned his thoughts in the hours and days after the terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers.
He also captured the scene on camera from 250 miles up, with a chilling image showing a smoke plume rising from the Manhattan area.
Nasa shared a snippet of his letter, documenting the spaceman’s reaction upon learning about the attack and then dealing with his emotions afterwards.
He wrote: ‘Well, obviously the world changed today. The flight surgeon told me they were having a very bad day on the ground. I had no idea…
‘He described the situation to me as best he knew it… I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this wasn’t a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes.
‘It just didn’t seem possible on this scale in our country. I couldn’t even imagine the particulars, even before the news of further destruction began coming in.’
Frank recalled ‘zipping’ around the station until he found a window to see New York, and grabbed a camera.
He added: ‘I was looking south from the window of Michael’s (Mikhail Tyurin, Russian flight engineer) cabin. The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city.
It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point.
‘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…
‘It’s difficult to describe how it feels to be the only American completely off the planet at a time such as this. The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming.’
‘I know that we are on the threshold (or beyond) of a terrible shift in the history of the world. Many things will never be the same again after September 11, 2001,’ he explained.
‘Not just for the thousands and thousands of people directly affected by these horrendous acts of terrorism, but probably for all of us. We will find ourselves feeling differently about dozens of things, including probably space exploration, unfortunately.
‘It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point.
‘Other than the emotional impact of our country being attacked and thousands of our citizens and maybe some friends being killed, the most overwhelming feeling being where I am is one of isolation.’
Frank would later learn that the plane that struck the Pentagon had been piloted at take-off by his Naval Academy classmate Charles Burlingame.
The two had been aeronautical engineering majors together, and had both gone on to become F-4 fighter pilots.
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