While on a short sightseeing vacation trip to NM. from CA. from 9 Jun 2009 to 12 June 2009,on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 both my friend and I were traveling west leaving ROSWELL towards CHACO CANYON NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK via US 70. We decided to follow a route via US 380 West towards SOCORRO, and see if we could find any available lodging on route. After securing a room at a local motel in the town of CAPITAN, we decided to go for a ride and check out the countryside and stars that night, since the skies had turned clear enough to do so. Somewhere around 8:00 pm(20:00 hrs)we found State 234 eastbound and headed towards ROSWELL (Lincoln County). For those unfamiliar with, NM STATE 230 is a 2 way road which appears to be mostly used by local farmer traffic and apparently not a very busy road at night. Providing NO light pole illumination, night falls quickly after dusk(or sometime between 8:45 PM and 9:10 PM or 20:45 to 21:10 hrs this time of the year). I had to engage the vehicle's high beam lights through out our entire ride, in order to better see the road's contour reflectors/markers/signs and also to avoid hitting any of the local wild life. In the 2.5 hours that we'd traveled to & from on this road, no other vehicles were encountered (nor could be seen at a far distance in the mostly flat landscape)in either direction.Sometime around 9:00 PM (21:00 hrs)we'd reached marker 41 on STATE 230 and after passing this marker, but before reaching 42, we decided that rather than continuing further in that direction, it was best to go trail back westbound for a spot to stop. So we turned the car around and parked just on the shoulder of the road by marker 41, before heading back west to CAPITAN. We turned off our vehicle's engine & lights, and sat there inside the vehicle talking in total darkness, checking out the view and commenting on how dark it was for this chilly, clear and moonless starry night(up to that point...a full moon rose up later on round 10:00 or so PM (22:00 hrs). At about 9:10 PM (21:10 hrs) and with the western skies providing just a bit more of lighter dusk shades on the horizon than the darker eastern skies, my friend and I both noticed an object, and although we couldn't make out the outline of it's fuselage, it had a very bright and steady glowing orange to reddish light. At first I thought it to be an aircraft traveling typically fast in a straight line, in a nor-east to east bound direction and at what seemed to me to be at a 30 degree angle above both the barely visible horizon, and the western mountain range. Having served in both the USMC & the USCG, I am well familiar with many types of military aircrafts, so it seemed somewhat odd to me that a craft traveling that fast at night, did not have any other type of fuselage lights "ON", nor did it produce the familiar distant sounds of jet engines, or sound barrier blasts we're all familiar with. I was just about to say something to my friend when at that very same moment he bursted out saying: "What is that?"..."do you see it?"No sooner does he asks... when this the object suddenly disappears, vanishing for what we'd estimated to be 5-6 seconds, when it suddenly re-appears again further along on what seemed to me to be 2-3 clicks to the east (still traveling on a straight course)when suddenly IT SPLITS INTO TWO(2)lights(of same orangish-reddish color), which traveled parallel to each other at first, then separating/widening apart in an arc fashion, until just as quickly both lights seemed to REJOIN or "MELT" back into ONE single light- VANISHING immediately thereafter. There was absolutely no sound or echo whatsoever of a collision, nor was there any visibly "hot" falling debris falling into the desert landscape, nor did we see any smoke or "trails" in the sky or fire coming out of the desert landscape thereafter. My friend and I sat there for about 5-10 minutes both perplexed and excited at what we'd seen. We asked ourselves a number of questions (i.e.: was it fireworks?...was it a satellite?...could it have been spotlights? but none of these questions seemed to have a rational answer as to what we'd witnessed on that night. The entire episode lasted approximately 30 seconds and although I had a digital camera with me, unfortunately I could not retrieve it and power it up quick enough to take pics of the event given how quickly it all happened.