GEIPAN
GEIPAN is a unit of the French space agency CNES based in Toulouse, whose mission is to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena and make its findings available to the public.
History and developments
GEIPAN was founded in 1977 as GEPAN. Claude Poher was the inaugural director, of then director general of CNES Yves Sillard.GEPAN was renamed to SEPRA in 1988, and then to Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes Rares Aérospatiaux in 2000. In 2005, the research unit was renamed to GEIPAN.
The French Gendarmerie was instructed to channel data from reports of UFO sightings to SEPRA, which therefore was in a position to draw on a large database of such events. In cases where physical traces appeared to be present, SEPRA could call on the technical resources of CNES to perform a thorough scientific investigation. A famous example of such an investigation was the Trans-en-Provence Case.
In March 2007, GEIPAN started to make its to the public. The same year, French skeptics criticized the quality of their investigative work, arguing the sightings were too quickly filed as unidentified. On March 26, 2007, the CNES' own report said that 28% of sightings remain unidentified.
More recent reports of GEIPAN estimate the unidentified sightings at around 3%.
Directors
GEPAN period
- 1977–1978 Claude Poher
- 1979–1983 Alain Esterle
- 1984–1988 Jean-Jacques Velasco
SEPRA period
GEIPAN period
- 2005–2009 Jacques Patenet
- 2009–2011 Yves Blanc
- 2011–2015 Xavier Passot
- 2016–2019 Jean-Paul Aguttes
- 2019–2020 Roger Baldacchino
- 2021–2023 Vincent Costes
- 2024–present Frederic Courtade