On September 4, 1971, the Costa Rican National Geographic Institute was taking aerial photos from 10,000 feet of Lake Cote, the small body of water that would later become the larger Lake Arenal, as part of preliminary studies for the future hydroelectric project.
UFO Photo CANNOT be Debunked!
The Picture
The study was funded by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) to determine water sources in the area for their planned hydroelectric project.
Photographer Sergio Loaiza, along with Costa Ricans Juan Bravo and Francisco Reyes, traveled on a twin-engine Canadian F680 with a special 100 lb map-making camera donated by the German government rigged onto the floor of the plane snapping a photo about every 13 seconds.
In 1979, Ricardo Vilchez, one of the project team members, sent the photograph to an organization in the United States called Ground Saucer Watch (GSW) which analyzes these types of cases. GSW determined that the image was true and unadulterated, reported CRHoy.
After that, the photograph became public in the Costa Rican media.
“It’s one of the most compelling scientific confirmations that UFOs are real,” recounts Oscar Sierra, a UFO researcher based in Costa Rica.
Sierra said the photograph was analyzed in France and the United States by different organizations that studied the case, and all confirmed the object’s existence.
In 1999, for example, a collection of French officials, pilots and officers (most retired) put it on the cover of its COMETA report (Advanced Studies Committee). This document has long been thought to be among the most open statements on the UFO subject ever made. Titled “UFOs and the Department of Defense,” the report that was sent to the French government concluded that the ETH, Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis, was the most likely explanation for what’s truly going on with these objects.