French To Release Files On UFO Reports

[crunchy5]

The French space agency plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online but keep the names of those who reported them off the site to protect them from the pestering of space fanatics.

Jacques Arnould, an official at the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), said the French database of about 1,600 incidents would go live in late January or mid-February.

He said CNES had been collecting statements and documents for almost 30 years to archive and study them.
Now on News.com:


"Often, (reports of unidentified flying objects) are made to the Gendarmerie, which provides an official witness statement...and some come from airline pilots," he said by telephone.

Given the success of films about visitations from outer-space beings like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and Independence Day, the CNES archive is likely to prove a hit.

It consists of about 6,000 reports, many relating to the same incident, filed by the public and airline professionals. Their names would not be published to protect their privacy, Anould said.

Advances in technology over the past three decades had prompted the decision to put the archive online, he said, adding that it would likely be available via the CNES Web site.

http://tinyurl.com/w3vld

 

[Pete Younger]

Sounds interesting, must keep an eye out for that!

 

[GNC]

Jacques Arnould

With a name like that, I suppose he'd know if it came from outer space...

 

[Yithian]

Extract:

France is the only country in Europe to maintain a full-time state-run UFO (unidentified flying objects) department. There used to be one in the UK and another in Denmark but they closed down years ago due to budget cuts. ​

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France's UFO unit consists of four staff, and about a dozen volunteers who get their expenses paid to go on site and look into reports of strange sightings in the skies. ​

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The team is called Geipan. That's a French acronym for Study Group and Information on Non-Identified Aerospace Phenomenon.​

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Its boss is Xavier Passot. Surrounded by dozens of books on UFOs, and stacks of documents, he tells me his mission is to be as transparent as possible about strange sightings and to follow up on each one that his team receives. ​

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They publish their results on their website which gets 30,000 hits a month. The team receives, on average, two UFO sightings a day. The department insists an 11-page form is filled out for each one. The idea is to provide details including photographs where possible but also weed out jokers and time-wasters.​

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Source (full of good little facts):​

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29755919​

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Official Website (exceeds Yith's limited French, ham sandwiches not once being met):​

http://www.cnes-geipan.fr​