From orbit, a photograph taken on September 11, 2001 by Frank Culbertson documented a long, dark plume of smoke streaming from New York City. Culbertson made the image while aboard the International Space Station, roughly 400 kilometres above the planet; the picture has since become a distinctive visual record of the attacks on lower Manhattan.
The morning’s coordinated hijackings struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center, caused major damage to the Pentagon and resulted in a fourth aircraft crashing in rural Pennsylvania. The events killed 2,977 people, a figure recorded by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The scale and immediacy of the destruction were visible from multiple vantage points, including Culbertson’s position in low Earth orbit.
Viewing the scene from above offered a different perspective on the unfolding catastrophe. At the time, Culbertson photographed a dense column of smoke and later noted a peripheral bloom at its base that suggests the image was made near the collapse of one of the towers. The photograph captures both the physical extent of the damage and the atmospheric consequences of the attacks; the plume was still detectable in satellite imagery taken in the following hours and days.
Crews aboard the station also observed broader effects on civilian flight: routine contrail patterns over the United States largely vanished as airspace was grounded, with one exception — a single trail associated with a government aircraft returning the president to Washington. Culbertson learned while in orbit that the pilot who died at the Pentagon was his former flight-school classmate, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, and the crew later passed over the damaged military headquarters. Subsequent orbital and satellite images, including data from Landsat, recorded lingering smoke and damage, reinforcing the role of space-based observation in documenting the immediate aftermath of major events on Earth.
