September 11 Attacks Remembered: NASA Astronauts Pay Tribute to Victims, Sending Memorial Videos and Photos to Earth

Astronauts have taken part in solemn ceremonies across the United States to commemorate the September 11 attacks two decades ago.

According to a Space.com report, as the whole country remembers the terrorist attacks 20 years back, astronauts in space are paying tribute to victims from the International Space Station.

For instance, astronaut Shane Kimbrough from NASA, one of the seven crew members on the station that represent countries including the US, France, Japan, and Russia, broadcasted a video message to Earth in honor of people lost and affected by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, Pentagon in Washington DC, and the crashing of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

In the said video where the astronaut is seen with an American flag floating in the background said, as he spoke from the Japanese Kibo laboratory of the station said, to the victims, as well as their families, those who survived the attacks, and first responders, "We remember."

(Photo: VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP via Getty Images)
NASA US astronaut Shane Kimbrough broadcasted a video message to Earth in honor of people lost and affected by the 9/11 attacks.

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Actual Attacks Captured

NASA and its partners have recurrently honored the memory of victims lost in the September 11 attacks with ceremonies not just on Earth but in space and on other planets, as well.

As the terrorist attacks unfolded in 2001, Frank Culbertson, an American astronaut, said he watched from aboard the ISS with horror as he recorded videos and photos of massive plumes of smoke from the World Trade Center site. The camera that this astronaut used for the images is now on display in a Kansas museum.

In a similar report, PressNewsAgency said, in a letter, Culbertson wrote one day following the attacks, he said, the world changed today. He also said, what he says or does is just minor compared to the implication of what happened to this country today when it was attacked.

Describing the 20-year-old terroristic occurrence, the American astronaut said, it is horrifying to see smoke that pours "in your own country" from quite an eccentric vantage point.

The contradiction of being on a spacecraft devoted to enhancing light on Earth and watching the destroying of life by such deliberate, dreadful acts is vibrating to the psyche regardless of "who you are," he continued.

The National 9/11 Flag

The Kennedy Space Center of NASA contributed American Flags, which was sewn into a bigger, tattered flag now called the National 9/11 Flag that was retrieved near the World Trade Center site following the attacks.

According to Kimbrough, the ISS, the largest human-built object in space and the product of different space agencies and 18 countries, illustrates what humankind does when it's working together.

He elaborated that on the ISS over the past two decades, they have been continuously living together in space while they operate among other countries to enhance lives for everyone "back on earth."

People from all over the world, not to mention from all walks of life, he continued explaining, joined together to complete the engineering achievement of constructing an international space station "in low Earth orbit."

Lastly, he said the space station is currently entering its 30th year in the period of complete scientific use, expanded commercial value, and worldwide alliance.

Culbertson remembers the 9/11 attacks as shown on NASA's YouTube video below:

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