Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

by Diana Graettinger and Kevin Miller

Bangor Daily News

Mysterious lights in the skies off the coasts of eastern Maine and Canada generated a flurry of calls to police from witnesses worried about everything from a falling aircraft to flying saucers.

While officials said they could not be positive, the fireballs that filled the night sky were most likely remnants of a rocket that lifted a satellite into orbit Monday.

Shortly after 5 p.m. Monday, police scanners in the Calais area started hopping with a report that an airplane had crashed in the Bay of Fundy, just south of Point Lepreau in New Brunswick.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent officers to the area, but they soon were called back when RCMP officials learned more from the Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"It wasn't a flying saucer, or an aircraft or green men or nothing," RCMP media relations spokesman Sgt. Derek Strong said with a laugh.

He said that although it did look like a meteor shower, the orange flares were debris from a satellite that re-entered Earth's atmosphere and crashed into the ocean off Point Lepreau.

A spokesman for a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed Monday evening that what he called a "national security satellite" was launched just after 5 p.m. from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"We did have a launch and it did go north, so there is a possibility of a booster [rocket] or something coming down in that general area," said Rick Oborn with the National Reconnaissance Office, which designs, builds and operates the nation's spy satellites.

Most often, such booster rockets break up and disintegrate before reaching Earth, Oborn added.

The unexpected light show created quite a buzz.

"We have received calls from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, all the way to Nova Scotia," said Ken Stewart, a search and rescue specialist with the U.S. Coast Guard station in Portland.

Officials at the Washington County Regional Communication Center in Machias also were receiving telephone calls - hundreds of them.

"People are thinking they are seeing orange flares, plane crashes, fiery balls, the whole nine yards," said dispatcher Cindy Rossi. "Everywhere from Blue Hill to LaGrange to Township 21, Cutler and Jonesport," she added.

Rossi said the dispatch center contacted the Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration in Bangor. The FAA said there were no reports of a missing plane. She said the Canadian Coast Guard in Halifax told her it was a meteor shower.

The dispatcher said she went online and found on the Maine Nature News Meteor Showers Calendar 2007 Web site that meteor showers were scheduled for around now.

According to the Web site, two periods of meteor activity are expected around this time - the Geminids Dec. 7-17 and the Coma Berenicids from Dec. 12 to Jan. 23, 2008.

Strong said that RCMP officials were relieved it was a satellite rather than an airplane.

"Those kinds of things don't happen every day and if it does, it doesn't happen around here," he said.