AnomalyGEIPAN received several email testimonies of observations of spectacular luminous trails in the sky on December 24, 2011, in the late afternoon. In addition, four observations made by airplane pilots are reported to GEIPAN: all describe a strong luminous phenomenon observed at very high altitude above the Strasbourg – Black Forest region. The official American information site on space debris reentries, reentrynews.aero, indicates that object number 2011 078B reentered the atmosphere at 16:26 UTC, therefore at the same time as the observations. The last indicated orbit barely crosses the observation locations. The debris in question is identified as the 4th stage of the Soyuz-FG launcher launched on December 21, 2011 at 13:16 UTC from the Baikonur cosmodrome, for mission TMA-03M: sending 3 cosmonauts to the ISS. All witnesses indeed observed the reentry of the 4th stage of the Soyuz-FG launcher launched on December 21, 2011.
France, France · 2011-12-24 · from the GEIPAN archive
An account in France, France
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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.