A NASA panel has issued a report recommending that the United States space agency expand its efforts to collect data on unidentified objects in the sky, commonly referred to as “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) by the government. The panel also suggests that NASA should play a more significant role in assisting the Pentagon in detecting these objects.
In response to the report, NASA stated that it is evaluating the findings and recommendations put forth by the independent study team. Nevertheless, the agency has established a new position, the Director of UAP Research.
The NASA panel, comprised of experts from various scientific fields, including physics and astrobiology, released this report after conducting its first public meeting in June.
UAPs are more commonly known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.
The report emphasizes that NASA possesses a range of existing and planned assets for Earth and space observation, as well as an extensive archive of historical and current data sets. These resources should be leveraged to gain a better understanding of UAPs. While NASA’s Earth-observing satellites may not have the spatial resolution to detect relatively small objects like UAPs, their advanced sensors can still be utilized to investigate local Earth, oceanic, and atmospheric conditions associated with UAP sightings.
The U.S. government has recently disclosed information it has gathered on the subject of UAPs, a topic that was previously met with official silence. The report characterizes UAPs as “one of our planet’s greatest mysteries” and notes that observations of unidentifiable objects in the skies, distinct from balloons, conventional aircraft, or known natural phenomena, have been reported globally.
Despite numerous accounts and visual observations, the report acknowledges that there is a lack of consistent, detailed, and well-documented data, making it difficult to draw definitive scientific conclusions about UAPs.
In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a Navy-led task force issued a significant report that included numerous UAP observations, mainly from military personnel. Some of these cases involved enigmatic aircraft exhibiting extraordinary speed and maneuverability beyond known aviation technologies, with no visible means of propulsion or flight control surfaces. The report stated that defense and intelligence analysts lacked sufficient data to determine the nature of some of these objects.
The independent NASA panel studying UAPs cited challenges in their work, including a stigma associated with the subject and a lack of scientifically reliable methods for documenting UFOs.
During a 2022 congressional hearing, two senior U.S. defense intelligence officials affirmed the Pentagon’s commitment to determining the origins of UAPs, with a focus on addressing potential national security threats. However, they were cautious in their statements regarding possible extraterrestrial origins and stated that they had no evidence suggesting non-terrestrial origins within the UAP task force. There had been no open congressional hearing on the subject since the termination of the Air Force’s UFO program, Project Blue Book, in 1969. Another congressional hearing in July included testimony from retired military personnel, but no government officials appeared.
