NASA Tasks Team With Explaining UFOs

NASA is bringing a scientific perspective to UFOs, launching a 16-member independent study team to investigate what are now known as unidentified aerial phenomena. The team—chaired by astrophysicist and Simons Foundation President David Spergel and including experts on astrobiology, data science, oceanography, policy, and planetary science—will spend nine months scouring unclassified data on UAPs, NASA says. "Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP," with findings to be shared with the public in mid-2023.

In May, at Congress' first UFO hearing in 50 years, the Pentagon said it had information on 400 UAP encounters, per the Hill. A year earlier, it had identified 144 unexplained UAP encounters from 2004 to 2021. Members of the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee then warned that such encounters posed potential national security risks. "Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies," says Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate.

As Smithsonian reports, "most UAP research to date has been conducted by military and intelligence organizations," which aren't necessarily interested in the scientific aspect. In a June statement, Zurbuchen noted "there's many times where something that looked almost magical turned out to be a new scientific effect," per CNN. The study, costing no more than $100,000, will be separate from an ongoing Pentagon investigation. It brings together former astronaut Scott Kelly, astrobiologist David Grinspoon, biological oceanographer Paula Bontempi, data science professor Anamaria Berea, Federal Aviation Administration safety expert Warren Randolph, science journalist Nadia Drake, and others. (More UFOs stories.)