Sighting in Saint-Michel-en-Grève, August 4, 2024

At 23:23, a witness on a beach noticed a short bluish streak crossing the night sky from the northwest toward the southeast. The witness took the time to make a 30-second exposure photograph, on which the object appears clearly. There was only one witness, but the image could be fully used in the investigation, which gives the case good consistency.

The investigation considered two possibilities: the atmospheric re-entry of a meteor or of a piece of space debris. The appearance of the object, a short, bluish, straight streak, fit both. However, measurements made on the photograph with the IPACO software gave a speed of about 3 km/s, assuming movement across the witness's line of sight. That is well below the speeds typical of a natural re-entry, which rules out a meteor. The object was therefore more likely a human-made space object, probably a piece of debris burning up in the dense layers of the atmosphere.

The CNES Operational Centre for Space Surveillance was asked about this, but its filters only detect and list debris with a friction surface larger than 10 m² (estimated mass above 2.5 t), so a smaller piece could easily have gone unlisted. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable atmospheric re-entry of space debris.