Green light in Bouches-du-Rhône, France

Recent testimony (2015) about an old observation (date of day arbitrary). In December 1978 (the witness does not remember the exact date of the day) around 6:40 PM, a bus driver observes to the East in the sky the silent N-S passage of a luminous phenomenon. The UAP is described as a green glow, a sort of large water droplet accompanied by three other small droplets following it. The passengers also observe the phenomenon. The whole thing disappears at lightning speed. Only one testimony was collected. This testimony has all the characteristics of an observation of atmospheric reentry of space debris: duration, appearance, behavior. GEIPAN searched for other similar events in December 1978. On December 2, 1978, starting at 5:15 PM, a particular luminous phenomenon was observed from different points of French territory. An incident on a military rocket launched from the Biscarosse test center is the cause of these observations. This rocket, having gone into a "spin" at launch, was intercepted and exploded in flight at 10,000 meters altitude, which explains the visibility of this event over part of the country. Apart from the time difference (5:15 PM versus 6:40 PM in our case), the difference in observation direction does not fit: the witness looks to the East and the phenomenon is observed as moving from North to South; to see the Biscarosse incident, the witness would have had to look to the West. So this is not the phenomenon the witness could have observed. The witness cites an article from the daily newspaper "La Provence" that deals with the observation of an atmospheric reentry of rocket or satellite debris. It could well be this phenomenon that our witness observed, but GEIPAN did not find this article on the Internet. A search with the newspaper could resolve the doubt. The Spacetrack site (US Space Command) indicates numerous atmospheric reentries of space debris in December 1978; the lack of a date on this testimony does not allow searching for possible correlations between the observation and one of these reentries. Despite the resemblance to an observation of atmospheric reentry of space debris, GEIPAN cannot confirm this hypothesis for lack of cross-checks (The "La Provence" article could possibly provide the necessary information). Pending additional information, GEIPAN classifies this case "C" due to lack of precise date information.