Sighting in Fontvieille, December 1978

The account was collected in 2015 and concerns events from long before; the exact day is unknown, as the witness remembered only the month, December 1978. At about 6:40 pm, a bus driver saw a luminous phenomenon cross the sky silently in the east, moving from north to south. It was a green glow shaped like a large drop, followed by three smaller drops. The passengers on the bus also saw it, and it vanished at lightning speed. Only one testimony was collected, however.

The duration, appearance and behaviour described match those of an atmospheric re-entry of space debris. GEIPAN looked for similar events in December 1978. On 2 December, from 5:15 pm, a luminous phenomenon was seen from many places in France: a military rocket launched from Biscarosse had gone into a spin, was intercepted and exploded in flight at 10,000 metres altitude. That event cannot be the one the witness saw, because the time differs and the direction does not fit: the witness was looking east, whereas seeing the Biscarosse incident would have required looking west.

The witness mentioned an article in the newspaper La Provence about a re-entry of rocket or satellite debris. This could well be the phenomenon they saw, but GEIPAN could not find the article online; a search through the newspaper might settle the question. The Spacetrack website lists many re-entries of space debris in December 1978, but without a date for this sighting no correlation can be checked. Despite the resemblance, GEIPAN could not confirm the re-entry hypothesis and classified the case C because the date is not precise.