GEIPAN
French space research unit (founded in 1977)
GEIPAN (an acronym in French for Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés, or Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Research and Information Group) (/ɡaɪˈpɑːn/) is a unit of the French space agency CNES based in Toulouse, whose mission is to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP) and make its findings available to the public.
01History and developments
GEIPAN was founded in 1977 as GEPAN (Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés, Study Group for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena). Claude Poher was the inaugural director, under the permission of then director general of CNES Yves Sillard.
GEPAN was renamed to SEPRA (Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes de Rentrée Atmosphérique, Atmospheric Re-entry Phenomena Expertise Department) in 1988, and then to Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes Rares Aérospatiaux ("rare aerospace phenomena expertise department") 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 archives available online 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%.
02Directors
GEPAN period
- 1977-1978 Claude Poher
- 1979-1983 Alain Esterle
- 1984-1988 Jean-Jacques Velasco
SEPRA period
- 1988-2004 Jean-Jacques Velasco
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
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “GEIPAN”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ufo reports in france by year according of GEIPAN archives 1.png by ChatGPT 3 and 4o AI; This data is based on GEIPAN open data, at 27.08.2024 under this link --> item csv files --> All cases, you can load during 27.8.2024 csv file, rename it for script "cases.csv" https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/en/search/cas, Public domain
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