Didier Mathure (Melvin Poupaud), propelled despite himself at the head of Gepan in the Series -

Nicolas Velter - Montebello Productions - Canal +

  • This Monday, Canal +, broadcasts Monday the first episodes of "UFO (s)", a series shifted on UFO desk.

  • Geipan, a group of studies and information on unidentified aerospace phenomena, has really existed for forty years on the Cnes site in Toulouse.

  • As in fiction, the small team collects strange testimonies with kindness and treats them methodically.

  • It opens an average of 150 investigations per year and often finds a rational explanation for the phenomena.

    But 3.5% of cases resist it.

No one smokes like a firefighter there anymore and the mustache is not really trendy anymore.

But the Geipan, the Study and Information Group on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ex-Gepan) does exist in Toulouse.

As in

Ovni (s)

, the zany, polished and very seventies series which starts this Monday on Canal +, it occupies a "small" ground floor of the Cnes site, and houses a small team, "the equivalent of four full-time ".

We find there the "wall of emotions", all these drawings that witnesses of strange phenomena restore.

The table of cases, in the true gauge of Geipan, in Toulouse.

- Pascal Pavani - AFP

And as in fiction, we cultivate a certain sense of self-mockery.

“The team came to see us often.

I reread the scenario but we did not validate the content, explains Roger Baldacchino, the real person in charge of the 21st century version of the Geipan.

I saw the first four episodes.

The series is offbeat, pleasant to watch and there is a global respect for our missions ”.

"A witness is always honest"

Well, no, "Ariane is not a German program" but the engineer understands that the scriptwriting springs are sometimes freed from the scientific pride of nations.

Above all, the Geipan “has never been a joke” as he treacherously and often slips it to Didier Mathure, the director bombarded in spite of himself in fiction, his amused colleagues.

Only a few days left before UFO (s)!

The GEPAN is ready 👌 # UFOs to discover on January 11 on CANAL +!

pic.twitter.com/Y24lUm8kKC

- CANAL + (@canalplus) January 9, 2021

In real life, the Geipan, the only civil service in the world in its specialty, receives on average "600 requests per year which gives rise to 150 inquiries".

"People sometimes have the fear of sounding eccentric, but for us a witness is always honest whatever the strange thing he saw and which often frightened him", insists Roger Baldacchino

Even if it means disappointing our X-Files side, the Geipan "does not work on the paranormal" and does not do research on extraterrestrial life.

With a network of twenty volunteer investigators deployed throughout France, the help of fifteen experts, the support of a "UFO" report which all the gendarmeries now have, he instructs, analyzes, dissects methodically the testimonies.

Well-established interfaces with the Army or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, if necessary accelerate the process.

And the service makes it a point of honor to publish all its results on the Web.

Wedding balloons flying in a cluster

Despite the arrival of smartphones, forty years after its creation, the “UFO office” receives few images of often furtive phenomena.

"But we manage to explain 60% of cases", assures Roger Baldacchino.

Between the "Thai lanterns", the radar tracks of planes, which "seen from a certain perspective can look like big cigars", the passages of the International Space Station which, necessarily for the Cnes, have no secrets, or still the data on astronomical phenomena and weather, the majority of the mysteries find a rational explanation.

Last spring, a couple of scientists contacted the Geipan after balls of lights traveling in clusters flew over their pool.

A simple foray on Google Map allowed the team to locate the village hall and to trace the release of luminous balloons from a post-containment wedding.

The famous unexplained "D cases"

In roughly 30% of cases, due to a lack of precision in testimonies and data, the Geipan, which regularly comes back to its “cold cases”, has a plausible hypothesis but cannot certify it.

And then there are the famous “classified D” files, the unexplained cases, which continue to make one fantasize or shudder.

As this “yellow circle with a green bar” appears in 2019 in the middle of the night in the countryside… Maybe a drone.

Maybe something else.

This "case D" remains open.

With the series, Roger Baldacchino says to himself that the telephone will ring more beautiful in Toulouse.

After an already abnormally turbulent year 2020 and a peak of more than 1,000 reports.

Blame it on the often clear sky of the confined spring evenings.

But also the StarLink program, billionaire Elon Musk: dozens of satellites launched in bursts, soon thousands.

So many luminous phenomena likely to land at Geipan.

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