- An independent study team will survey a wide range of unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs.
- NASA will also study unexplained UFO sightings
- It is going to be working with the government, nonprofits, companies, civilians
NASA’s independent study about UFOs will start early in the autumn and will work when the Pentagon mission to analyze UAP reports from aviators. Last August, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the space agency would be more open to looking into unidentified aerial phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere such as aircraft that seem to work in extraordinary ways. But NASA’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, said forming the independent panel was his idea.
“The most exciting things in science are things we don’t understand, and my starting point — I think all our starting points for this — is that there are phenomena that we don’t understand,”. Said astrophysicist David Spergel, who’ll lead the study team.
“How do we start to make progress? We have a very limited set of observations right now with these UAPs. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions. So we start by trying to figure out what data is out there. We’re going to be working with government, nonprofits, companies, civilians, and try to identify what data is already there, then start to think about what data should we collect in the future.”. was quoted, David.
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will work as the agency official responsible for performing the study. Members of the study team haven’t yet been announced, but NASA said they would include “experts in the scientific, aeronautics and data analytics communities.”
“One of the outcomes of the study, for me, would be to communicate to everybody, whether it’s our own community and more broadly, that the scientific process is a valid process for any and all problems, including that one,” he said.
It would take about nine months to conclude the study, at a cost of no more than $100,000. “Consistent with NASA’s principles of openness, transparency, and scientific integrity, the report will be shared publicly,” Evans said Evans told reporters that the basics of this study would be to remove the myths related to outer space creatures and their existence.
The search for traces of extraterrestrial life has been one of NASA’s main missions, including geological studies of Mars, an upcoming mission to an icy Jovian moon called Europa, and surveys looking for planets beyond our solar system. But studies of unexplained space phenomena have been more interesting and have mostly involved providing explanations for strange sightings.
Such cases include weird objects spotted in Apollo moon photos, orbital observations of the “Face on Mars” — and most recently, rover views of a Martian geological feature that’s been compared to a dog door.
The organizers of the upcoming study focus that they wouldn’t attempt to explain UAPs on a case-by-case basis, but would simply survey the types of data that were available as a resource to further analysis. “We should be open to the idea that we’re looking at several different phenomena,” said Spergel, a retired Princeton professor who’s now president of the Simons Foundation. “There’s a pretty wide range of what might be accounting” he added.
Zurbuchen said he is also prepared for a wide range of explanations, ranging from potential architecture left behind by alien civilizations to previously unknown types of natural phenomena.
“Don’t ever underestimate what nature can do for you, Sometimes we have this assertion that we understand the natural world, and everything that’s not explained with the laws of nature that we have right now is somehow not natural. I just really believe that there’s a lot to learn still.” Zurbuchen concluded.
