2005 / T200
GEIPAN replaces SEPRA
CNES, Toulouse
Witness account
France's space agency CNES reorganized its UFO study function as GEIPAN, the Group for Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena, replacing SEPRA. The lineage reaches back to GEPAN in 1977 and SEPRA in 1988. The addition of an explicit information mission is important: France did not begin governmental UFO work in 2005, and its later online case archive was another stage in a continuing institutional history.
Public record
CNES and GEIPAN institutional histories document the replacement and describe collection, analysis and archiving of reports, including material from the gendarmerie and civil authorities. Their records establish a governmental investigative function, not a government endorsement of any particular extraterrestrial interpretation.