CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The skipper of the International Space Station beamed back new video Wednesday of a devastated New York City while sending a heartfelt message to a nation still reeling from the most audacious terrorist attack in world history.
A day after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. astronaut Frank Culbertson and two Russian cosmonauts made a predawn pass over the northeastern U.S. and saw the glow from lights from the New York City disaster site.
"I know its a very difficult day for everybody in America right now, and I know folks are struggling very hard to deal with this and recover from it," Culbertson told flight engineers in NASAs Mission Control Center in Houston.
"But the country still looks good," he said, "and I just wanted the folks in New York to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space."
Taped with a camcorder, the new video showed familiar geographical landmarks lit up a few hours before sunrise and a bright white light presumably from the area where emergency workers were searching for survivors and clearing up debris.
The billowing plume created by the terrorist attack at the twin 110-story towers, meanwhile, could be seen in video beamed back by Culbertson Tuesday and then broadcast for the first time on NASA TV Wednesday.
Other shots from a NASA Earth observing satellite dubbed Terra also showed the smoke-and-debris plume drifting south of the city.
Back on Earth, NASA headquarters in Washington D.C., reopened for business but agency field centers around the country essentially remained closed to all but essential personnel.
Heightened levels of security remained in place at the headquarters building as well as agency facilities outside Washington.
Here at Kennedy Space Center, a scaled-back emergency operations crew of about 200 people remained in place to safeguard the agencys coastal Florida spaceport and protect the nations $8 billion shuttle fleet. The rest of the centers 12,000 civil service and contractor workers, however, were given leave.
"NASA and the Kennedy Space Center take the threats to the national security very seriously," said KSC spokesman Bruce Buckingham. "Our top priority is to ensure the safety of our work force and the security of the space shuttle fleet and other invaluable national assets at Kennedy Space Center," he added. "We are taking the necessary precautions to achieve these safety and security goals."
The story was much the same at Johnson Space Center.
A flight control team was on hand to work with the station crew which includes cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin but most of the 13,000 JSC employees took the day off.
"Were not locked down," JSC spokesman Dan Carpenter said. "But weve asked most folks to stay home today."
Also operating with essential staff only: Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., among others. Center-by-center decisions on whether to reopen agency facilities for normal business Thursday are expected by late Wednesday.
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