Sighting in Couetron-au-Perche, May 17, 2025

Around midnight, on the night of 16 to 17 May 2025, the witness was standing in their garden, facing south and looking at the sky. There was no light pollution. They noticed a luminous phenomenon, which they first took for a satellite, moving from west to east in a straight, smooth line for about 30 seconds. The object then suddenly turned through roughly 90 degrees and headed toward the southern horizon for about another 10 seconds. Its glow then faded gradually over two seconds, as if it were leaving the sunlight. The witness knew that such an object is only visible because sunlight reflects off its structure.

The case has low consistency: there was a single witness, and both the position of the phenomenon and the time of the observation were imprecise. According to the investigation, the 90° turn was most likely the result of two separate objects in orbit. The first followed a west-to-east path typical of a satellite, passed almost overhead (75°), and stopped being visible when it left the area where the Sun's position allowed it to reflect light. A second object, also passing nearly overhead but travelling north to south, entered that area and became visible. Its gradual fading fits with it entering the Earth's shadow. Many satellites, including those of the Starlink network, could explain the first object. For the second, a good candidate is a Russian rocket stage (SL-8 R/B), which emerged from the Earth's shadow at 23:57 at 72° elevation in the south-southwest, then disappeared again at 00:00 at 25° elevation in the south. The observation time is too imprecise to pin down the objects with certainty. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable observation of two objects in orbit.