Sighting in Debris Spatiaux (retombee) — National, September 25, 2008

At around 11 p.m., many witnesses, both in southern Brittany and in the south of France, saw a very powerful luminous phenomenon cross the sky from the northeast toward the southwest. Many reported what they saw to the press. Five contacted the GEIPAN by telephone, five by email and three by questionnaire. Some went to the gendarmerie, which passed three accounts on to the GEIPAN.

The descriptions varied widely. Colours ranged from white to yellow, orange or red. Shapes were described as a ball, a point, a rocket-plane, even a rectangle. Estimated distances ran from 300 m to 8 km. The direction was most often north to south or northwest to southeast, and sometimes west to east. Most witnesses said it took 1 to 4 minutes to cross the sky, though observation time was mostly under a minute, with a few cases of more than two minutes. One feature recurred: the object broke up into more than ten pieces.

According to the GEIPAN, the simultaneity of the sightings and these shared features leave little doubt about a single origin, except possibly for the Pontoise case. Such variability is common in mass sightings, since witnesses far apart from one another did not have the same viewing angle or watch for the same length of time. The large number of witnesses at the same moment, spread over a wide area, shows that the phenomenon was powerful and at high altitude, so atmospheric re-entry is certain. The direction of travel and the duration pointed to a piece of satellite debris rather than a natural meteoroid. US space surveillance information confirmed this. The case is classified A: re-entry of a third stage of a PROTON launcher.