In March 2025, a photograph that had been circulating online for at least 14 years resurfaced on social media. It allegedly shows the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York City from the view of the International Space Station.
For example, on March 18, an Instagram user posted the picture with a caption that read, in part: "On September 11, 2001, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was the only American in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS). As the ISS passed over the East Coast, he captured this haunting image of smoke billowing from Lower Manhattan, just hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center."
(Instagram user @pastpreserved)
About a week earlier, a Reddit user posted the photo with a similar caption.
In September 2011, the image appeared in news stories marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks. A reverse image search on TinEye brought up 1,438 results as of this writing, many of which were more than a decade old.
In short, the photograph is authentic. NASA has a page on its website titled "Astronaut Frank Culbertson Letter from September 11, 2001," which hosts the picture in question along with journal entries by astronaut Frank L. Culbertson Jr., who was commander of the space expedition.
NASA's caption for the photo reads, in part: "The image shows a smoke plume rising from the Manhattan area. The orbital outpost was flying at an altitude of approximately 250 miles. The image was recorded with a digital still camera."
In his journal on Sept. 12, 2001, Culbertson explained how he felt when he first learned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "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 at ~0900 CDT. 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."
The astronaut continued, referencing fellow crew members Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov:
I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera. It happened to be a video camera, and I was looking south from the window of [Mikhail's] cabin.
The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. 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 …
I panned the camera all along the East Coast to the south to see if I could see any other smoke around Washington, or anywhere else, but nothing was visible.
It was pretty difficult to think about work after that, though we had some to do, but on the next orbit we crossed the US further south. All three of us were working one or two cameras to try to get views of New York or Washington. There was haze over Washington, but no specific source could be seen. It all looked incredible from two to three hundred miles away. I can't imagine the tragic scenes on the ground.
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.
The video footage shot by Culbertson is available on YouTube. NASA posted it on Sept. 7, 2011.
Further, NASA's image and video library hosts a gallery of pictures from the space station on Sept. 11, 2001, and surrounding dates.
Elsewhere, NASA wrote Culbertson was the only American crew member aboard the space station during the 9/11 attacks, as was claimed in the 2025 social media posts.