NASA to Launch Scientific Study of UFOs
Last month, the US Congress held its profitable public hearing on UFOs in 50 years. On Thursday, the space agency said it’s commissioning a scientific study on “observations of acts in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or illustrious natural phenomena.”
More widely known as UFOs (unidentified flying objects), the term UAP, aka unidentified aerial phenomena, is a more formal way of speaking the same thing, while also giving a little distance from the popular opinion of UFOs as extraterrestrial objects. “There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA emphasized in the statement today.
The congressional hearing and a Pentagon relate issued in 2021 have failed to shed much palatable on UAPs. Sightings have included a series of videos captured by the Navy, comprising some newly released footage shared during the hearing. Government officials have expressed concerns about flight safety as well as state security should any of the UAPs be the work of foreign interests.
Astrophysicist David Spergel of the Simons Focus will lead the independent study team, which will go to work later this year. Spergel is taking a data-first near. “Given the paucity of observations, our first task is naively to gather the most robust set of data that we can,” he said. “We will be identifying what data — from civilians, government, non-profits, companies — exists, what else we necessity try to collect, and how to best analyze it.”
In a NASA teleconference Thursday, Spergel said he intends to go into the behold with no preconceived notions and that he is open to the idea that UAPs could have certain different explanations.
The team will take about nine months to ruined the study, which will also look at how best to composed future data on UAPs. The report will be made public.
NASA could bring a novel perspective to the investigation of UAPs.
“We have access to a tall range of observations of Earth from space — and that is the lifeblood of scientific inquiry,” said NASA associate administrator for science Thomas Zurbuchen. “We have the tools and team who can help us progress our understanding of the unknown. That’s the very definition of what science is. That’s what we do.”
