Re-entry of a Russian Proton rocket stage seen from France

Summary

On 25 September 2008 at 23:00, hundreds of witnesses across southern Brittany and southern France saw a spectacular luminous phenomenon crossing the sky from northeast to southwest. Many contacted GEIPAN by phone, email or questionnaires; others went to the gendarmerie. Testimonies agreed the object was very bright, though they varied in shape, colour and estimated distance. The simultaneity and certain shared features — such as fragmentation into more than ten elements — pointed to a single event. Differences in descriptions were explained by each observer's perspective and distance. It was confirmed as the atmospheric re-entry of the third stage of a Russian Proton rocket, whose direction and duration matched the observations.