A light show some thought was caused by space junk re-entering the atmosphere Sunday over Texas was a meteor shower, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command said Monday.

Michael Kucharek said the fireball couldn’t be traced to man-made objects.

“We don’t think it was space junk,” Kucharek said. “We thought it was a meteor shower.

We can’t track naturally occurring objects, only man-made objects. Based on everything we were seeing in our space and missile domain at Peterson (Air Force Base) it didn’t appear to be man-made objects.”

NORAD tracks thousands of orbiting items, including satellites, two of which collided over Sibera. But Kucharek said that wasn’t the cause of Sunday’s spectacle.

News 8 in Austin reported that the FAA notified pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible space debris after a collision a week ago between U.S. and Russian communication satellites. The chief of Russia’s Mission Control said clouds of debris from the collision will circle Earth for thousands of years and threaten numerous satellites.

The debris field from the collision is described as huge, but scientists are still trying to determine the full scope of the crash, News 8 reported.

Air Force goalie Andrew Volkening between the pipes against Rochester Institute of Technology forwards Jesse Newman (10) Matt Crowell (9) at the Cadet Field House Friday, Dec. 5, 2008. Photo by KEVIN KRECK, THE GAZETTE

Kevin Kreck