An account in France, France

On December 21, 1988 at around 12:50 AM, a very large number of witnesses spread across French territory along a north-south axis observed the passage across the sky of a very bright white object with a yellowish-orange trail. The speed of the phenomenon was very fast and no noise was heard. At the end of the trajectory, the object split into several pieces. The next day, south of Bourges, a farmer found in his field a piece of sheet metal about 70 cm long (see report No. 1189). After examination of the recovered piece, it turned out to be a piece of the nozzle of the Russian Soyuz launcher (see reconstruction in the "investigation elements" documents). This rocket had launched on December 16, 1988 from Plesetsk (USSR) the satellite COSMOS 1984 (an optical reconnaissance satellite of the Yantar 4K2 type, which fell back on February 13, 1989).

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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.