Around 9:50 p.m. Thursday evening, a strange glow in the sky caught the attention of many witnesses, all over France.
From Paris to Lyon, from Rennes to Vichy, and even as far as Spain to Madrid, the mysterious object, which moved at constant speed in a spectacular halo of light, looked nothing like an airplane, nor a drone, nor even to a meteorite… Quickly, photos and videos of the phenomenon were published on Twitter with this hashtag “UFO”.
" What is that thing ?
“post Sofian on the social network.
Like him, they are hundreds to doubt.
Some even speak of extraterrestrials… No offense to ET fans, a much more rational explanation is actually hidden behind this mysterious streak of light.
Read alsoUFOs: do extraterrestrials exist?
What the US intelligence report says
It is, according to several specialists, a rocket launched by SpaceX.
The president of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Éric Lagadec, alerted by panicked Twittos, recalled that the company of billionaire Elon Musk was launching one of its rockets that same evening.
“Many people testify to me having seen this across the sky of France.
A priori, it is a SpaceX rocket, no UFO in sight!
“, he wrote on Twitter.
The launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was also broadcast by Youtuber UFOTINIK shortly before.
But then how can a rocket taking off from Florida produce such a phenomenon thousands of kilometers away?
The specialized site Frontera Espacial provides an explanation.
"The cloud is the result of the gases emitted by the engine brake of the 2nd stage of the rocket", decrypts the site.
Because during the de-orbiting maneuver of the 2nd stage of the rocket, intended to disintegrate in the atmosphere, the gases emitted by the engine came into contact with the Earth's atmosphere and created this plume of light, right at the moment where it passed over France, at an altitude of 200 km.
Everything fits.
The mysterious UFO was finally… only a piece of rocket.