Sighting in Fourg, June 14, 2011
Doubs, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
Sighting on June 14, 2011 in Fourg (Doubs, France). GEIPAN identified the phenomenon with certainty: it was the International Space Station (ISS) (class A).
What happened
Several witnesses saw a bright point of light cross the sky repeatedly, each time along the same path. The witness who supplied the times was looking south, and the light moved along a southwest-to-east axis.
Investigators compared these times with passes of the International Space Station (ISS), to which the ATV2 cargo vehicle was docked at the time. The path matches the station's trajectory, and with a magnitude of -3.0 the ISS is a bright object that is easy to see with the naked eye. The pass times looked up afterwards on the Heavens Above website differ slightly from the witness's, because the station's orbit is corrected every week.
GEIPAN classified the case as A: the witnesses saw successive passes of the ISS.
Account rewritten by SkyUnknown from the investigation report published by GEIPAN (CNES). The original text and case documents are on the official record.
- Date
- June 14, 2011
- Location
- Fourg · town centre
- Type of sighting
- From the ground
- Source classification
- A
- Explanation
- Space station (ISS)
Sources
- See the original document
GEIPAN (CNES)
n° 2011-06-02776
Summary written by SkyUnknown from the facts published by the source.