What 9/11 Was Like for Astronaut Frank Culbertson, the Only American Not on Earth for It

Naval aviator and astronaut Frank Culbertson took off from the John F. Kennedy Space Center aboard the Shuttle Discovery on Aug. 10, 2001, to take command of the International Space Station (ISS) for nearly four months. It should have been memorable because it would be the first and only time he would command the station.

Instead, he became notable for what happened on Earth below: Culberson was the only American who watched the Sept. 11 terror attacks unfold from low earth orbit.

Culbertson's career, like all NASA astronauts, was exemplary. A 1971 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he became a naval aviator, weapons and tactics instructor and attended the Navy's Test Pilot School. By 1982, he was working on the Navy's transition to adopt a new aircraft, the iconic F-14 Tomcat, into its carrier fleet.

Culbertson was selected for astronaut training in 1984, graduating the next year. He participated in so many milestones in NASA's history, including the Challenger investigation, docking with the Russian space station Mir and making the first nighttime shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center.

Despite all of these accomplishments, most know him for being the only American who wasn't on Earth during the formative event of the dawn of the 21st century.

As the crew medical officer and commander of Expedition 3 aboard the ISS, Culbertson's job was to call in results after examinations of himself and his crew. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Culbertson called down to flight surgeon Dr. Steve Hart. That's how he got the bad news.

"Steve said, 'We're not having a very good day down here on Earth,'" Culbertson recalled in a 2015 NASA interview. "He began to describe to me what was happening in New York. ... As we were talking, he said we just lost another airplane somewhere in Pennsylvania, we don't know where or what's happening. They told us all they could, which wasn't very much."

His Russian cosmonaut colleagues asked him what was happening, and as they spoke, Culbertson noticed that the station's world map laptop indicated they would soon be over New England. He grabbed a video camera and went to the window where he could get a view of the Earth.

"I could clearly see the city. It was a perfect weather day all over the United States," he said. "The only activity I could see was this big black column of smoke coming out of New York City. ... When I zoomed in with the video camera, I saw this big gray blob basically enveloping the southern part of Manhattan. What I was seeing was the second tower coming down."

At the time, he didn't realize that blob was the collapsing second tower. In his mind, it was much worse. He assumed it was more explosions, with potentially tens of thousands of people getting hurt or killed.

"It was horrible to see my country under attack," he recalled.

The ISS passed over the Atlantic. He knew he had around 90 minutes before they would see the city again. So the crew set up every camera they could to capture everything they could see as they passed the U.S. again. That's when they saw the damage to the Pentagon.

"I could look straight down and see the gash in the side of it," Culbertson said. "The lights of the rescue vehicles, the smoke of the fires ... Every orbit, we kept trying to see what was happening."

Even in space, everything had suddenly changed. Their usual view of the United States from orbit was dramatically different. The crew could usually see contrails from aircraft crisscrossing the country, but soon there was only one: the contrails of Air Force One as it returned to Washington with President George W. Bush aboard. In addition, NASA Mission Control in Houston was moved to an undisclosed location, so information could only come in from Moscow.

As if a full day of uncertainty from a lack of information and the helplessness of being so far away weren't enough, the attacks hit Culbertson personally the next day. When contact with American ground control was reestablished, he learned that his close friend and fellow academy grad, Charles "Chic" Burlingame, was the chief pilot of American Flight 77, which had been flown into the Pentagon.

"He and I had both been aero majors, we both flew F-4s, we knew each other very well from school and from flying," he said. "It became very personal to me at that point."

Ten days later, the 30th reunion for the Naval Academy's Class of 1971 took place during the academy's football game against Boston College. Culbertson recorded a video message to memorialize Burlingame and his service, one that included a rendition of "taps" that Culbertson played on his trumpet in zero gravity.

"I played 'taps' for Chic because I had my trumpet up there, and he and I both played in the Drum and Bugle Corps at the Naval Academy," Culbertson said. "I thought it was a fitting tribute to him."

Culbertson also saw the U.S. military's response to the attacks a few weeks later, also aboard the ISS, as the station floated past Afghanistan.

"I always looked at Afghanistan which was easy to find at night in the Middle East because there [were] no lights. Everywhere else was very well-lit," he recalled. "I was looking out one night, and I saw these flashes of light in the area of Afghanistan. And what I was seeing for the first time was combat from space."

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