Around the world
French cases and the official GEPAN, SEPRA and GEIPAN investigations. 28 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
Sightings13 Feb 2023
Astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky in Hungary spotted a small asteroid hours before it hit, only the seventh found before impact. It entered the atmosphere at 02:59 UTC over the English Channel as forecast, fireball cameras recorded it, and meteorites were later recovered in Normandy.
Photo: Wokege, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government13 Oct 2022
France's space agency CNES, through its UAP office GEIPAN, held the CAIPAN II conference in Toulouse on Oct. 13-14, 2022. More than 100 scientists, investigators and associations presented methods and tools for investigating UAP reports.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
SightingsJun 2021
The SIGMA2 commission of France's aeronautics and astronautics association 3AF, drawing on former CNES, ESA, DGA and ONERA staff, released a progress report on unidentified aerospace phenomena days before the US intelligence report on UAP.
Media11 Jan 2021
French pay channel Canal+ began airing OVNI(s), a period comedy created by Clemence Dargent and Martin Douaire. Set in the 1970s, it follows a CNES rocket engineer reassigned to run GEPAN, the real French space agency office that studied UFO reports.
Sightings3 Jul 2018
Greenpeace activists flew a drone into the no-fly zone of EDF's Bugey nuclear plant in France and crashed it into the wall of the spent-fuel building to show the site's vulnerability. EDF said two drones overflew the site, one was intercepted, and the security of the installations was not affected.
Photo: Spiritrespect, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings19 Feb 2016
An Air France A320 from Barcelona descending toward Charles de Gaulle met a drone the captain estimated passed about five meters from the left wing; the co-pilot flew a manual avoidance. France's BEA classed it as a serious incident and opened an investigation.
Photo: Benoit Prieur, CC0
Sightings24 Feb 2015
On two straight nights, unidentified drones were seen over Paris sites including the Eiffel Tower, the U.S. Embassy and the Interior Ministry. Police opened an investigation; a government spokesman said hobbyists were the likely operators.
Photo: Getfunky Paris, CC BY 2.0
Military26 Jan 2015
Drones were detected over Ile Longue near Brest, home of France's ballistic-missile submarines, on the night of 26-27 January 2015, and the maritime prefecture sought to confirm it. A deputy raised it in Parliament amid months of drone overflights of French nuclear sites.
Photo: Rundvald, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government8 Jul 2014
France's space agency CNES, through its UAP study unit GEIPAN, hosted a two-day international workshop in Paris on better ways to collect and analyze UAP reports. Scientists, gendarmerie and air force officials and outside researchers presented; GEIPAN published the papers and slides.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
GovernmentMar 2007
France's space agency CNES opened its UFO study unit's case files to the public online, starting with about 400 of roughly 1,600 cases and promising the rest later. Press reports called France the first country to publish its official UFO archive this way.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Government2007
Yves Sillard, a former director-general of France's space agency CNES, published a 2007 book on unidentified aerospace phenomena. He told a regional daily the extraterrestrial idea should be weighed seriously and objectively but remained only a hypothesis.
Government2005
Following an audit, CNES restructured its UFO service as GEIPAN, adding public information to its mission and placing it under a steering committee with gendarmerie, police, air force and weather service members. The committee first met in September 2005; GEIPAN later put its case archives online.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
WhistleblowersMay 2004
Jean-Jacques Velasco, who had led the French space agency's UFO office SEPRA since 1987, published a book arguing that UFOs exist and probably have an extraterrestrial origin. CNES said the view was his alone, as SEPRA disappeared from its organization chart.
Media2000
Journalist Leslie Kean wrote about a 1999 French report on UFOs by retired officers and experts (the COMETA report) for the Boston Globe, which ran it after about six months of pitching. Kean later said the paper heavily edited it. She went on to co-write the 2017 New York Times story.
Military1999
A French working group of about a dozen specialists led by retired Air Force General Denis Letty issued a report on UFOs and defense and took it to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. It cautiously raised an extraterrestrial explanation; it was a private effort, not a government study.
Sightings28 Jan 1994
The crew of an Air France A320 flying Nice to London reported a large dark disk that changed shape and vanished near Coulommiers, while a military radar logged an unidentified 50-second track. GEIPAN ruled out a weather balloon and classes the case unexplained (D).
Photo: Aero Icarus from Zurich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings5 Nov 1990
Around 7 p.m. a bright luminous formation crossed much of France, and CNES's SEPRA received more than 1,100 witness reports and police statements. A NASA telex let SEPRA identify it as the reentering third stage of the Soviet rocket that launched the Gorizont 21 satellite.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Government1988
France's space agency CNES dissolved its UFO study group GEPAN and its scientific council, after years of shrinking resources, and replaced it with SEPRA, a service focused on atmospheric reentries. CNES later said SEPRA was left with a single staff member and no editorial authority.
Sightings21 Oct 1982
A man told the gendarmerie that a luminous object had hovered over his garden, and that amaranth plants nearby were found dried out. Gendarmes and GEPAN took plant samples; GEPAN Technical Note 17 (1983) analyzed them and discussed a possible strong electric field.
Sightings8 Jan 1981
A man near Trans-en-Provence in southern France told gendarmes a craft had landed briefly on his property and left marks on the ground. Gendarmes took samples, and GEPAN analyzed the soil and plants in a 1983 technical note. It remains one of France's most discussed cases.
Photo: Tredok, CC BY-SA 2.0
Close encounters26 Nov 1979
Friends of Franck Fontaine, 19, told police he vanished from a car near Paris after a UFO appeared; he reappeared a week later. France's GEPAN found nothing of value. In 1983 friend Jean-Pierre Prevost told a reporter he had staged it and hidden Fontaine in an apartment.
Photo: Alvar Lavague, CC BY-SA 4.0
GovernmentJun 1978
France's CNES UFO study group GEPAN, overseen by a council of senior scientists, presented its first results from 1977-1978 case inquiries in a June 1978 report to that council. CNES later said the findings showed cases worth further study; founding head Claude Poher left in October 1978.
Photo: Edal Anton Lefterov, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government1 May 1977
France's space agency CNES set up GEPAN, a unit in Toulouse to collect and analyze reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena, with engineer Claude Poher as its first head. It became SEPRA in 1988 and GEIPAN in 2005, and still operates.
Media20 Jan 1975
Claude Poher of the French space agency CNES and Jacques Vallee presented a statistical paper on patterns in UFO reports at the AIAA 13th Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Pasadena, placing the subject before a major engineering society.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government21 Feb 1974
Asked about UFOs by journalist Jean-Claude Bourret on France Inter, Minister of the Armed Forces Robert Galley said something remained unexplained, urged an open mind toward witnesses, and noted that his ministry had collected reports since 1954. The press called it a first for a sitting minister.
Photo: Nikoze, CC BY-SA 4.0
