WASHINGTON – NASA will commission a small independent study of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), a move the agency says is part of its desire to support risky research with high-performance potential.
The agency announced on June 9 that it will set up an independent team of researchers who, starting in early fall, will spend about nine months examining what data is available on UAPs and making recommendations on what additional data needs to be collected to understand better the phenomena. A final report will be published publicly at the end of the study.
UAP sightings have drawn considerable attention in recent years, including studies by two groups established by the Department of Defense. However, there is no consensus to explain these sightings, mainly by military aviators, with justifications ranging from advanced weapons and extraterrestrial objects to natural phenomena or miscellaneous objects, such as balloons.
The goal of the study, said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate science administrator, in a call with reporters, is to “take a relatively poor field of data and make it a much richer field of data and, therefore, worthy of scientific knowledge, research and analysis ”.
The study will be chaired by David Spergel, an astrophysicist who is president of the Simons Foundation. “Our plan is to conduct open research that we hope will advance our understanding so that when this is over, we will have at least a roadmap on how to move forward,” he said in the call.
He later said that the only preconceived notion he had about the UAPs entering the study was that the data could be explained by several different phenomena. NASA, in its statement on the study, stressed that “there is no evidence that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin.”
“Never underestimate what nature can do,” Zurbuchen said. “Sometimes we have this statement that we understand the natural world and everything that is not explained by the laws of nature that we have right now is not somehow natural. I really think there is still a lot to learn.”
Dan Evans, associate associate director for research in NASA’s Directorate of Science Mission, said the study team will include scientists, aeronautics experts and “data practitioners.” The study, he said, will be set up like the committees NASA regularly sets up to review grant proposals, and will have a similar budget that he said is unlikely to exceed $ 100,000.
With this limited budget and timeline, Evans said the focus will be on identifying existing data and data gaps, rather than finding an explanation or explanations for UAPs. “The first step in any scientific research is to find out what data is at hand,” he said. “Actually, within this budget, we will not analyze this data directly. This is just the first step: what data is there that could be contributed to the problem.”
Earlier in the day, Zurbuchen announced the UAP study at a meeting of the Board of Space Studies of the National Academies (SSB). He presented it as an example of “high-risk, high-impact” research that he believed the agency should do more.
“Learning risks is necessary to drive innovation and leadership,” he told the meeting. “We say failure can actually be an option. We think about failure all the time and feel comfortable.”
He told the meeting that in conversations with scientists, 8 out of 10 told him that the agency was not doing enough high-risk / high-impact research. Reviewers of grant proposals found that 3% of these proposals fell into the high risk / high impact category. “My intention is that it should be bigger.”
At both the SSB meeting and the call with reporters, Zurbuchen acknowledged the “reputational risk” associated with the UAP study. “In a traditional-type scientific setting, talking about some of these issues can be considered whether or not real science is sold,” he said in the call. “I really strongly oppose it. I really believe that the quality of science is not measured by the results behind it, but also by the issues that we are willing to address with science.”
SSB members showed little interest in the UAP study they announced, using a question-and-answer session to raise issues such as research funding and demographics, as well as the status of specific missions and programs. .