Chance encounter with a stratospheric kerosene rocket plume from Russia over California

A high-altitude aircraft flight on April 18, 1997, detected an enormous aer osol cloud at 20 km altitude near California (37 degreesN). Not visually ob served, the cloud had high concentrations of soot and sulfate aerosol, and was over 180 km in horizontal extent. The cloud was probably a large hydroc arbon-fueled rocket vehicle, most likely burning liquid oxygen and kerosene . One of two Russian Soyuz rockets could have produced the cloud: a launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on April 6; or one from Plesetsk, Russia on April 9. Parcel trajectories and long-lived trace gas concentrati ons suggest the Baikonur launch as the cloud source. Cloud trajectories do not trace the Soyuz plume from Asia to North America, illustrating the unce rtainties of point-to-point trajectories. This cloud encounter is the only stratospheric measurement of a hydrocarbon-fueled rocket.