Cylinder over Van Nuys, Los Angeles, CA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
After much research, I have come to the conclusion that the lighted, flipping object I saw was most likely "space junk." There must be many UAPs with lights on them that are actually lights on the circumference of a rocket booster or similar. The lights are probably mounted so that the rocket boosters can be located after falling back to earth. And I surmise that rocket boosters are disengaged at a lower altitude and could come out of an initial orbit to end up in a trajectory against the direction that satellites typically rotate around the earth. Still, at the time, it was marvelous to see!
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #171644). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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What would the paper say?
For a dated, located U.S. sighting, FAA radar data and ATC communications are the records most likely to exist. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2022-07-08 → 2022-07-25