The Lambersart Spheres

At four in the morning on 17 June 2012 a man in Lambersart could not sleep. He went out to let his cat into the garden and sat on his terrace under a clear, starry sky. Far off he saw what looked like ducks flying in formation from south to north. He soon realised they were not ducks. They were spheres, clear like soap bubbles and faintly lit on one side, ten to fifteen of them stacked in layers. They passed almost straight overhead in complete silence. Each looked the size of a one-euro coin held at arm's length. About fifteen seconds later the whole formation had flown into a large white cloud to the north and was gone.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerospace phenomena. The witness emailed it in September 2012. Its investigation report, dated November 2013, is in the file. It found no aircraft or satellite in its databases for that hour. Weather records from Lille-Lesquin airport gave cloud bases of 1,460 and 1,770 metres and a light south-westerly wind.

From the cloud height the investigator put the spheres between 1,460 and 2,000 metres up. At that range the coin comparison makes each one 49 to 68 metres across. Objects drifting on the wind could not have crossed the sky that fast, so GEIPAN set that idea aside. Aircraft in formation fitted the height and speed but not the look or the silence, and GEIPAN rated that hypothesis weak.

Its conclusion is plain. The objects show characteristics "qui ne s'apparentent à aucun objet naturel ou manufacturé connu" (that resemble no known natural or manufactured object). It calls the testimony precise but notes a single witness and no photograph. It classes the case D1, which means it investigated and could not explain it.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds witness identities, so the record carries no identified witness. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the inquiry. What crossed the sky over Lambersart is not resolved here.