2002-02-06 - Fairbanks, AK - Fireball

turn around for 1 min with gushing out smoke.

I saw fire ball. At first I thoutght it was a shooting star, but it turn around for some seconds, and I saw the smoke.

I am not sure that was UFO or not, but it was something strange.

I was watching northern lights at that time, and beside me two men whom I don't know were there. I didn't hear any sounds because my car was making noise, but two other men said that made sounds.


((QUERY TO ANOTHER WITNESS TO SAME EVENT))

Dear Ms. ((name deleted)),

Thank you very much for the excellent report! In fact, we received one other report from Fairbanks.

From your description, I wonder whether the event might have been caused by a rocket launch of some kind. Are you able to make a telephone call, or two, to establish whether that might have been the cause? I suspect a call to the FAA would resolve the issue fairly quickly, since any facility launching a missile would have to apprise the FAA of the event.

If you find out what the cause was, I would be most grateful if you could drop us a note. We will add it to your report.

((FOLLOW-UP MESSAGE FROM OTHER WITNESS))

Mr. Davenport,

I did phone the FAA (ATC at FAI) this evening and was told that the research facility out at Poker Flats (an atmospheric research center about 30 miles north of my home) was potentially active at that time (the NOTAM filed by Poker Flats is open-ended) though none of the same staff was on tonight so we we're unable to verify. Poker Flats does apparently occasionally launch small rockets into the atmosphere for research. The FAA employee also stated that the research does "effect the Northern Lights" which may have something to do with the good lights show last night (actually now I'm more interested by that... ;) The specs would certainly seem to line up with where and what I saw. Thank you for your reply and suggestion. All the best to you.

Warmly, ((name deleted))

((END FOLLOW-UP))