GEIPAN Case 2010-11-02702 — MANS (LE) (72) 21.11.2010

Brief

On 21 November 2010 at 17:55, a witness on the 9th floor of a Le Mans apartment block opened their kitchen window and noticed an unusual luminous phenomenon to the east. In a cloudy sky, three lights — one red and two blue — arranged in a triangle approached the witness's position. An audible rustling or whooshing of air accompanied the visual passage. GEIPAN, the UAP investigation unit of France's national space agency CNES, assigned the case classification D1, indicating a phenomenon that remains unexplained after formal investigation; attached materials include gendarmerie procès-verbaux and technical notes.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

17 pages

Classification

D1 (GEIPAN — unexplained)

Programs

GEIPAN, GEPAN, SEPRA

Tags

triangular formation, multicolored lights, red light, blue lights, acoustic signature, Le Mans France, Sarthe department 72, 2010, GEIPAN D1, civilian witness, cloudy sky

Key points

• Three lights — one red and two blue — were arranged in a triangular formation, consistent with a recurring geometric UAP signature documented across multiple GEIPAN D-class cases.
• The witness was on the 9th floor of an apartment building in Le Mans (Sarthe, department 72), providing an elevated, unobstructed sightline toward the east.
• An acoustic signature described as a 'bruit de froissement d'air' (air-rustling sound) accompanied the visual observation, adding a cross-sensory data point beyond eyewitness testimony alone.
• GEIPAN assigned D1 classification — its highest-certainty unexplained category, reserved for cases where witness reliability is assessed as high and no conventional explanation was identified.
• The case file includes gendarmerie procès-verbaux (formal police interview transcripts) and technical notes, indicating a multi-document investigative record beyond the witness questionnaire.
• The observation time of 17:55 in late November places the event at or just after civil twilight for Le Mans, a transitional lighting condition that affects apparent luminosity of airborne objects.

Most interesting

• GEIPAN is the only operational government UAP investigation unit embedded within a national space agency — CNES — giving it access to atmospheric and orbital data unavailable to most investigative bodies.
• The D1 classification sits at the top of GEIPAN's explainability scale: the witness is judged credible, the observation is well-documented, and no prosaic cause was found after full analysis.
• The triangular light arrangement — one red anchor, two blue — mirrors the color-position pattern in several other GEIPAN D-class cases from the 2005–2012 period, a recurring signature in the French corpus.
• GEIPAN's lineage runs from GEPAN (1977) through SEPRA (1988) to its current name (2005), giving France one of the longest unbroken government UAP investigation histories of any country.
• Gendarmerie involvement in a case of this type is standard French protocol: local gendarmes take the initial procès-verbal from the witness, then forward the file to GEIPAN for technical review — a two-tier chain that separates witness intake from scientific analysis.