Sighting in Le Temple-sur-Lot, January 30, 2012

At 7:35 a.m., a witness noticed an object they first took for a star. It was spherical, white with a bluish centre, and looked about as big as a 5-centime coin. Suddenly it moved to the witness's zenith, then zigzagged from right to left, sped off, zigzagged again and headed south until it disappeared.

The investigation found that at that very moment, in directions very close to those the witness described, the International Space Station (ISS) was crossing the sky from northwest to southeast, extremely bright (magnitude -4, like Venus). The object's appearance matches the ISS, but its movement does not, since the station travels in a straight line. As the witness could not have missed the ISS, GEIPAN concluded that they had fallen victim to classic perceptual illusions, autokinesis and autostasis, which are common when watching a point of light against a uniform background. A veil of cloud hid the fainter stars, so the ISS was the only bright point visible. Because the sky was partly overcast, a slight doubt remains about whether the ISS was visible. The case was classified B, probable observation of the ISS.

The witness reported a second observation on 22 January without giving details; the ISS had passed above the northern horizon from 7:06 to 7:13 a.m. that day. A third, on 24 February at 9:20 p.m., involved two bright red spheres that followed each other perfectly. At that moment two American NOSS spy satellites were passing near the northern horizon, though such satellites are usually too faint to be seen with the naked eye.