The US space agency’s announcement comes as the study of unidentified flying objects gains more attention.
NASA has announced that it will begin a study of UFOs, a topic that has long fascinated the public, as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science.
The U.S. space agency said Thursday that an independent team would examine unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) focusing on identifying available data, how to gather more data, and how NASA can analyze the findings to move forward. in the scientific understanding of sightings.
The head of NASA’s scientific mission, Thomas Zurbuchen, acknowledged that the traditional scientific community might see NASA as “a kind of exhaustion” in venturing into the controversial subject, but he does not fully agree.
“We are not shying away from reputational risk,” Zurbuchen said during a webcast of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our firm belief is that the biggest challenge of these phenomena is that it is a field with little data.”
As NASA probes and rovers traverse the solar system in search of fossils of ancient microbes, and its astronomers search for so-called “technosignatures” on distant planets to find signs of intelligent civilizations, this is the first time that the agency will investigate unexplained phenomena in Earth’s sky. .
“For decades, NASA has responded to the call to address some of the most puzzling mysteries we know, and that’s no different,” Daniel Evans, the NASA scientist responsible for coordinating the study, told reporters in a call. .
The announcement comes as the field of study of UFOs, once a poorly considered research remnant, is gaining momentum.
Last month, Congress held a public hearing on UFOs, while a U.S. intelligence report last year listed 144 sightings that it said could not be explained. He did not rule out alien origin.
The NASA study will be independent of the Pentagon’s airborne timing and management group, but the space agency “has been widely coordinated across government on how to apply science tools,” he said in a statement. press release.
The study will last nine months, at a cost of no more than $ 100,000. It will be fully open, without using classified military data.
NASA said the team will be led by astrophysicist David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation to advance scientific research. At a press conference, Spergel said the only preconceived notion in the study is that there will likely be multiple explanations for UAPs.
“We need to address all of these issues with a sense of humility,” Spergel said. “I spent most of my career as a cosmologist. I can tell you we don’t know what 95 percent of the universe is. So there are things we don’t understand. “