An account in Alpes-Maritimes, France

On July 31, 2013, starting at midnight, a witness on the Madonne d'Utelle plateau was intrigued by the slow movement at high altitude of a luminous ball emitting flashes at regular intervals. Among the many satellites visible on summer evenings, it seems that the 3rd stage of the rocket that launched the American satellite LAGEOS in 1963 could match this observation. In the Calsky document, the sky chart oriented to the Northwest, with the Big Dipper on the right, shows a white trail that corresponds to the object's path in the sky over 30 minutes. This type of object is almost always rotating: a reflective element of this object can periodically reflect sunlight strongly and create a flash. However, the imprecision of the phenomenon's position in the sky does not allow this hypothesis to be confirmed. GEIPAN classifies this case "B": probable observation of a satellite (debris) at high altitude, whose rotation creates periodic flashes.