NASA has shared a poignant letter from the only American not on Earth when the 911 terrorist attack happened space station astronaut Frank Culbertson panned his thoughts in the hours and days after the attack on New York's twin tower C de Pentagon he almost captured the scene on camera from 250 Mi up with a chilling image showing a smoke plume rising from the Manhattan area the space agency said the following is the text of a letter from expendition through Commander Frank Albertson Captain usn retired reflecting on the events of September 11th the heartbreaking letter documents 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 a broken bar he described the situation to me as best he knew it at 9 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 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 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 Michaels mik tyan Russian flight engineer cabin nearly 3,000 people were killed when alqa hijackers crashed four planes into the Twin Towers the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania