Re-entry of satellite Cosmos 2047 mistaken for a UFO at Mirecourt

Summary

One night in November 1989, a woman in Mirecourt saw from her window a red luminous object pass quickly near her house. She described it as two superimposed cylinders with a black central band, flames, and a trail of sparks. After waking her husband, both confirmed the sighting before the phenomenon disappeared behind trees, in complete silence.

The case was initially classified D—unexplained—but a later GEIPAN review using modern tools determined it was the atmospheric re-entry of the Soviet satellite Cosmos 2047. The trajectory and witness descriptions matched the satellite's known data, raising the classification to A: resolved with high certainty.