It was 8:45PM, July-7-1997 White Sands Missile Range. I was leaving work and heading west on Nike Ave. I had just reached the horse shoe curve and noticed in the distant mountains an orange ball of light which I thought might be a fire burning two-thirds the way up the mountain side. There were fires in that same place the year before. The smoke of those fires invaded Main Post. As I continued to drive west on Nike Ave., I noticed that this was not a fire but something that was fiery orange in color and was floating down the mountain. When the object was about half way down the mountain it headed north towards Main Post. I continued to drive west on Nike Ave., towards Main Post. The object then changed from orange to a luminous white. The object then headed in my direction and stopped half way down Nike Ave. It stayed illuminated all the way from the mountain to the halfway point of Nike Ave. The light intensity stayed the same too. The object was about 3 to 4 car lengths away from me, about a stone throw. I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and stopped my car. The object started to descend and I thought it was going to land but it did not. It came within about seven feet of the ground and stopped in the air. I waited to see dust kick up around it but there was none. It looked like the sphere that carried the "Good Witch" in the "Wizard of Oz" movie. It was a perfect sphere in its shape approximately 9 to 12 feet in diameter. This object just stopped in the air and didn't float around or wobble but stayed in one place. Any other aircraft would wobble a little to compensate for air currents. There was no sound coming from this object like motors which other aircraft do produce. And there was no wind blowing that night. The object was so luminous that it was like looking right into a 100 watt light bulb at night and seeing nothing but the light. If someone was inside the object they may have been blinded. I parked my car on the opposite side of the road shoulder facing in the direction of the object. I then saw the object or light shut off. I waited a moment and the object turned back on again. I thought if there was any intelligence on board this thing it might understand mathematics. So I turned my headlights off and then blinked the headlights once, twice, and three times, then twice, then once again. This would show addition and subtraction in its simplest form. Now the object started to move in the direction from which it came. It followed the same flight path back the same way it had come, as though it was following a programmed flight course. I continued to drive west on Nike Ave. Keeping an eye on it until it went over the mountain, heading towards Las Cruces. This thing flew faster than I was driving which was 55 MPH. I headed home going north on Owen road which leads to Highway 70. As I clover leafed around to get on highway 70, I was now facing south and looking at the mountains where the object flew over. I could see two smaller bright lights coming over the mountain and they were together. It looked like headlights of a car flying over the mountain heading north. The lights flying parallel to each other split apart, one going west and the other going east and both turned back to the mountain they just come over to go back over it again. At this time I noticed a third light, it was a red blinking light hovering beyond the back side of the mountain, not moving. When all three lights met together they disappeared behind the mountain. After that, I did not see anything else. I continued to go home.To this day I don't know what I saw.