Orange Light Show Caused By Russian Rocket Debris

The gleaming streaks of light that danced across Pacific Northwest skies Friday night were the scattered remnants of a Russian rocket - not an unusually intense meteor shower, aerospace officials said yesterday.

Hundreds of callers from British Columbia to Oregon besieged authorities with reports of peculiar lights in the sky just past 9 p.m. on Friday. Confusion abounded: a Seattle UFO reporting service fielded dozens of calls, and some astronomers initially said the lights were a product of the Leonid meteor shower.

The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs, Colo., maintained yesterday that the streaks were fragments of a Russian SL-12 rocket used to launch a satellite into orbit several days ago. Whatever debris didn't burn upon re-entering the atmosphere landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington, officials said.

U.S. forces had warned the Japanese National Defense Agency on Thursday that debris from the Russian rocket could fall in waters 60 miles southeast of Kushiro, Japan, a city on the northern island of Hokkaido, according to Itar-Tass, a Russian news service.

Observers in that area reported seeing shimmering orange spots in the sky on Thursday night, but agency officials said no fallen debris was registered.

NORAD spokesman Scott Johnson said "space-junk" sightings like Friday's are rare, since most debris either disintegrates in the atmosphere or falls into water far away from populated areas.

"Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is water," Johnson said. "A lot of these things are never seen as they re-enter."

But the potential hazards of space junk have drawn greater concern in recent years.

With record numbers of satellites being launched, diplomats worldwide are looking to curtail the amount of debris orbiting the Earth.

The United Nations started work last year on a five-year plan to develop international regulations to help reduce space junk, and The Aerospace Corp. in June established a Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies.

Some aerospace experts are fearful of potential collisions between spacecraft and satellites, and the 8,000-plus objects currently in orbit. All of the objects are bigger than a softball.

"Space legislation is in critical need of a supplement for the issue of space debris, since current laws are viewed as being too general," Bess Reijnen, a Dutch professor of aerospace law, told Reuters news service.

Most space debris that falls to Earth plunks into the ocean, but there have been collisions on land. The largest was when parts of Skylab, a U.S. research station, were sprinkled over Western Australia in 1979.

In the past two years, space-junk crashes have been reported near a farm in Texas and in a remote area of Ghana. And in March 1996, scientists nervously anticipated the arrival of a 2-ton piece of a Chinese satellite, but the debris ended up falling in the South Atlantic Ocean.

There were no reports yesterday of space-junk collisions on U.S. or Canadian soil. Observers spoke with wonder of the lights' bright-orange color.

"It was spectacular," said Jim Cash of Redmond, who was walking his dog when he noticed the lights. "I knew they weren't comets, because comets don't fly in formation."

Bruce Balick, a University of Washington astronomy professor, said yesterday that NORAD's rocket explanation made sense. Balick and several students monitoring the Leonid shower Friday night spotted only a few, sporadic meteors before 9 p.m., suggesting that the sudden barrage of lights appearing later in the evening could be attributed to an external source.

Astronomy buffs who were looking for meteors may have assumed the rocket fragments were part of the shower, Balick said. Others, who noticed the lights but didn't know about the shower, were even more awe-stricken.

"It certainly added some surprise for the lucky people who saw those things," he said.

The Leonid shower, which arrives regularly this time of year, will reach its peak over the next few days, Balick said. The shower can be viewed without a telescope, and is expected to reach maximum brightness during the wee hours of tomorrow morning.

Jake Batsell's phone message number is 206-464-2595. His e-mail address is: jaba-new@seatimes.com