Section B · Former head of GEPAN/SEPRA (CNES)
Jean-Jacques Velasco
Optical engineer at CNES · head of GEPAN/SEPRA (1983–2004) · co-author of the COMETA report
Biography
An optics engineer at CNES (the French space agency) and, for more than two decades (1983–2004), head of the French official body for studying the phenomenon —GEPAN, later SEPRA—. Under his leadership the agency investigated hundreds of cases with a scientific method and published its classification. He directed the reference investigation of Trans-en-Provence (1981), where laboratory analysis of the soil and vegetation revealed non-trivial biochemical alterations associated with the trace. Co-author of the COMETA report (1999) and author of books on the subject, he holds —with more openness than the skeptical wing— that a residue of cases resists all conventional explanation.
Primary documents
'UFO's and Defense: What Should We Prepare For' — COMETA report (1999) + Carol Rosin letter
'Les OVNI et la Défense: à quoi doit-on se préparer?' is the roughly 90-page report published in July 1999 by COMETA, a private committee of retired French generals and senior officers and aerospace experts, chaired by General Denis Letty and including several former IHEDN auditors. It reviewed cases with radar, interceptions and qualified witnesses, among them Air France 3532 and Bariloche, and concluded that for a residue of about 5% the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most rational. It is not a document of the French government or the Ministry of Defence, and its conclusion is an argument by elimination over already known cases, not new evidence. The copy embedded here includes a letter from Carol Rosin.
NASA (PURSUE Release 01) · Public domain · US Government work · open original
Why they're here · 2 pieces
- 1981
Investigación de Trans-en-Provence
Directed the official study; soil and plant analysis with biochemical alterations
- 1999
Informe COMETA
Co-author of the report by senior French officials on UAP and defense
Sources
- Jean-Jacques Velasco — Wikipedia
- GEIPAN — CNES
- Informe COMETA 'Les OVNI et la Défense' (1999), traducción inglesa «UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?» — copia de archive.org (sustituye a la de CUFOS, retirada en oct 2026) — Primary document (complete English translation, 83 pp.).
Associated cases (1)
Biography summarized from public sources, classified by section (A-F).