Encounter Atlas
France is the only country whose space agency has run a UFO office continuously since the 1970s. GEPAN was founded at CNES in Toulouse in 1977, became SEPRA in 1988 and GEIPAN in 2005.
GEIPAN investigates reports with help from the gendarmerie, air force and Météo-France and grades each case from A (explained) to D (unexplained after investigation). According to CNES, about a quarter of cases are fully identified, 40% probably identified, a third lack data and around 3% stay unexplained. It began putting its archive online at the end of 2006.
Our data: GEIPAN's legal notice reserves all rights and forbids extraction of its content beyond private or educational copies, so we don't copy its cases. Search them on geipan.fr.
Official releases
- Dec 27, 2006
GEIPAN opens its case archives
CNES (French space agency) / GEIPAN
France's official UFO office announced it was putting 30 years of files online: about 1,600 cases, 6,000 witness statements and 100,000 pages. Its website now publishes every investigated case with a grade from A (fully explained) to D (unexplained after investigation), and offers CSV downloads.
The US Air Force also logged 18 Blue Book case folders from France.