UFOs in the daily Press:

They are not always flying saucers...

A satellite could have caused the light trails observed in the eastern sky

The appearance, a few days apart in the skies of Lorraine, Franche-Comté and Champagne of luminous trails, brought the curiosity of the public in all the Eastern region to the top: "collective hallucinations", some said ironically, "flying saucers", others said, "fireballs", some scientific circles said. In fact, the mystery remains intact and everyone is free to put forward the explanation which seems the most plausible to him. However, we wanted to record the hypothesis that Colonel Chappard, a retired engineer who has been interested in astronomy and nuclear energy for several years, kindly formulated for the benefit of our readers.

- The phenomena which have just been observed in France, Colonel Chappard told us, present a very clear difference from those in the United States. Indeed, while in America the luminous objects changed direction and marked a vertiginous acceleration, in France the trajectories were rectilinear...

"Before formulating a hypothesis, it is advisable to wonder about the dimensions of the objects which have been sighted, both in the north and in the east of our country. However, in the case of the phenomenon sighted in the north, this was followed by a violent shock wave which reached the ground four minutes after the luminous appearance. We could, therefore, determine that the height of the trajectory reached 70 kilometers of altitude while the object had a diameter of about 300 meters.

- "Can we conclude that this is an ordinary fireball?

- No, replies Colonel Chappard, because ordinary fireballs always have a very high speed, often exceeding 40 km per second, and their trajectory in the sky is only visible for a fraction of a second. However, the three phenomena observed in France in less than two months indicated much slower speeds and the trajectories were seen each time for several seconds."

- If it is not an ordinary bolide independent of the terrestrial system, would we be in the presence of an object orbiting the earth, that is to say a satellite?

Colonel Chappard thought for a moment and answered with all the precision of a man familiar with high mathematics:

- For an object crossing the sky close to the earth to be picked up by it and become its satellite, it is sufficient that the speed of this object is less than the speed of release at this spot. Let's take an example instead. for an object passing at a distance from the earth equal to that of the moon, to enter into gravitation around our planet, it would be enough for it to have a speed of less than 3,000 meters per second. However, very many small objects circulate between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and sometimes approach dangerously to our earth.

"It is very possible that one of these objects, unknown until now due to its very small dimensions, came close enough to the earth to be "picked up..."

Colonel Chappard specifies, however, that this is still only a hypothesis.

- If this new satellite exists, if the object observed in the Nord on January 7 is the same one that was observed in the East on January 9 and if during this time it has only rotated once around the earth, its period of revolution is 51 h. 15 minutes. "Its orbit would be in the form of an elongated ellipse with a major axis about 140,000 km, or about a third of the distance from the earth to the moon."

"On its passage at the closest point to the earth, its speed would be approximately 10,900 kms per second and at the furthest point, its speed would be no more than 540 meters per second...

- Don't you think that if such a satellite exists, it should reappear?

- Certainly and even very soon! In my opinion, its most spectacular reappearance will be around February 4, when the lunar conditions that existed during the the appearance of Dieppe, will occur again.