COROT spots piece of Delta 1 rocket

In late January 2007, inside the images collected to calibrate the seismology channel, COROT detected a junk object - a piece of a Delta 1 rocket launched in 1984.

This has left on the COROT's camera sensors (CCD) a small smear visible in the middle of this stellar field image. The movement of the object inside the CCD image fits well with the trajectory elements computed on ground.