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NASA joins UFO research, a senior space agency official said Thursday, forming a team that would examine “observations of events that cannot be identified as known planes or natural phenomena.”
The space agency would bring a scientific perspective to ongoing efforts by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to make sense of dozens of such sightings, said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of the scientific mission of the Pentagon. NASA, during a speech to the National Academies of Science, Engineering. , and Medicine. He said it was a “high-risk, high-impact” investigation that the space agency should not shy away from, even if it is a controversial field of study.
The announcement comes just weeks after a rare and historic hearing in Congress on sightings of what the Department of Defense calls unidentified aerial phenomena, better known as UFOs, and a report released last year by the director of national intelligence cataloging more than 140 flying objects. which officials could not identify.
On May 17, Congress held a hearing on UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), better known as UFOs. Here’s why. (Video: Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi / The Washington Post)
The nine-page report and the congressional hearing, however, were short on detail and did not draw any definitive conclusions about what the flying objects were, many of which were detected by naval aviators. Officials said they found no evidence that the objects were some kind of advanced aerospace technology developed by China, Russia or other nations. There was also no evidence that they came from extraterrestrial sources.
The limited number of such observations makes it difficult to “draw scientific conclusions about the nature of these events,” NASA said in a statement. The agency said it was concerned not only about national security but also about the safety of flying in the air. He also said: “There is no evidence that the UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin.”
Still, NASA said it wants to apply scientific rigor to an annoying problem that has been a fixation for generations. The UAP study is tailored to the agency’s mission to look for signs of life beyond Earth, from the study of water on Mars to the exploration of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. said the agency.
“NASA believes that the tools of scientific discovery are powerful and are applied here as well,” Zurbuchen said in a statement. “We have the tools and the equipment that can help us improve our understanding of the unknown. That’s the very definition of what science is. That’s what we do.”
NASA’s effort will be led by David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York City and former chair of the astrophysics department at Princeton University, and Daniel Evans, the associate associate director for the University of New York. research in the direction of NASA’s scientific mission. The study will take about nine months, NASA said, and will be independent of Pentagon efforts.
“There is potential national security and counterintelligence [impacts], that this is not what we do to make a living. And we won’t get into that at NASA, “Zurbuchen said.” But the agency is studying the atmosphere and aeronautics, “he said. different types of air vehicles “.
The report released by the director of national intelligence found that “some UAPs appeared to be stationary with high winds, moving against the wind, maneuvering abruptly or moving at a considerable speed, with no perceptible means of propulsion,” he found. report. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed the radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”
Speaking before the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation last month, Ronald S. Moultrie, the Undersecretary for Intelligence and Security, said the Pentagon is gathering evidence. eyepieces of mysterious flying objects that seem to defy the laws of physics.
“We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena,” he told the bipartisan panel. “We are committed to an effort to determine its origins.”
In an interview with The Washington Post last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had seen the UAP’s classified report when he served in the Senate. “My hair was lifted at the back of my neck,” he said.