The prominent emission feature near &lgr;2145 ¿ in the ultraviolet spectrum of an aurora has been tentatively identified by Dick [1978> as the doublet lines, &lgr;2139.68 ¿ and &lgr;2143.55 ¿, emitted by metastable N+(5S) ions, and dissociative excitation of N2 by electron impact with a cross section ?2¿10-18 cm2 has been proposed as the source of this species. A detailed laboratory study of dissociative excitation is described in this letter which suggests two alternative viewpoints of this process: (1) If the calculated radiative lifetime for the N+(5S) state [4.4 &mgr;sec> is correct, then the N+(5S) dissociative excitation cross section is 10 msec, thus suggesting that there are major errors in the lifetime computation.