Sighting in Debris Spatiaux (retombee) — National, December 24, 2011

Several people wrote to GEIPAN to describe spectacular luminous trails in the sky in the late afternoon on Christmas Eve. Four airline pilots also reported what they had seen: each had noticed a strong light phenomenon at very high altitude over the area between Strasbourg and the Black Forest.

The investigation drew on the American website reentrynews.aero, which tracks re-entries of space debris. It states that object 2011 078B re-entered the atmosphere at 16:26 UT, exactly when the sightings were made. Its final orbit passed very close to the places where the witnesses were.

The object was the fourth stage of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle, which lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on 21 December 2011 at 13:16 UTC for the TMA-03M mission, carrying three cosmonauts to the ISS. GEIPAN concluded that all the witnesses had seen the atmospheric re-entry of this fourth stage, and classified the case as A (identified).