NASA has a Remembering September 11th post up on their official site today, and the most compelling part of it deals with 9/11 as seen from space.

The image above was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite with the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on September 12th, 2001. The day after 9/11, you can still see the smoke and debris billowing from Ground Zero.

Another interesting aspect of the story is astronaut Frank Culbertson, the only American not on planet Earth when the attack occurred. He was actually high above the Earth aboard the International Space Station.

As the attacks went down, Culbertson was passing over the NYC area. On the morning of September 11th, he took out his camera and snapped the photo seen below –

“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,” he said in a public letter written on that day.

We can only imagine what it felt like on that tragic day to watch it all happen from space.

As we approach the seventh anniversary of the catastrophic events of September 11th, 2001, America looks back and remembers, but also looks ahead. While that day will never be forgotten, the construction of the Freedom Tower signifies the “enduring spirit of freedom” that America embodies now, embodied seven years ago, and will embody forever. Standing 1,776 feet tall in honor of the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Freedom Tower is expected to be complete by 2012.

Watch the video and see what the new tower will look like.