An orange orb in Ardennes, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases that were classified at the time as type "D" cases and that are now being re-examined, with the sole aim of being more relevant in the conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigative experience gained over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification explained in an investigation note. This observation case formerly named VOUZIERS (08) 1997 is one of the cases classified as "D" by SEPRA. On February 19, 1997, the newspaper L'Union published in its columns an article reporting the observation of a UAP by a resident of VOUZIERS (08) a few days earlier. Reading this article prompted the local gendarmerie brigade to act. The witness was heard on February 21. He reported that while driving his van, he saw discontinuously in the sky the movement of a glowing orange ball from West to East. With the window open, no noise was heard. The investigation conducted on site in the following days did not find any other witnesses or any information concerning the observation of this UAP. This case is not very consistent: - a single witness, inconsistencies between the statements made to the journalist and to the gendarmes. - lack of precision or coherence on the positions of the UAP in the sky, on the duration, on the date. It is possible (by cross-checking) to resolve part of the inconsistencies or imprecisions. What can be reconstructed of the observation gives it many common characteristics (observation duration, shape, size, color, trajectory) with a perfectly known astronautic object: the Mir space station. Moreover, Mir did make passes in the evening sky during the observation period, under conditions consistent with what can be reconstructed of the observation. But the MIR hypothesis would correspond to an observation, not on February 6 but on February 5 or 7, which would remain consistent with the testimony since the latter leaves doubt about the exact date: the witness says in the press article "Thursday February 6", while in the gendarmerie report, he says "Tuesday February 6, 1997". February 6, 1997 was in fact a Thursday. On February 6, the station was visible under the observation conditions but 45 minutes later than the reported observation time. One can think that the witness's error would rather concern the day than the time, without however being able to exclude the opposite. It is noted that the testimony was given 15 days after the observation. In total, the UAP observation presents many similarities with the visibility of the Mir station during that period. Nevertheless, the imprecisions or inconsistencies of the testimony (date, departure direction of the UAP, exact position of the witness) prevent formally identifying this case as a misidentification with the Mir station. Conversely, this same inconsistency does not allow giving this observation an unexplained character. Depending on whether one accepts the date error or not, one can retain: - that it is an observation of MIR on February 6 (but with a probability barely above 0.5) and the conclusion would be UAP B observation of MIR. - or that we do not know what the witness saw without having consistent elements to conduct research or support a strange observation, and the conclusion would be UAP C lack of reliable information. GEIPAN chooses the second option and classifies the case as UAP C: lack of reliable information.