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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – NASA is launching a study on UFOs as part of a new push towards high-risk, high-impact science.
The space agency announced on Thursday that it is creating an independent team to see how much information is publicly available on the matter and how much more is needed to understand the unexplained sightings. Experts will also consider how best to use all of this information in the future.
The head of NASA’s science mission, Thomas Zurbuchen, acknowledged that the traditional scientific community might see NASA as “less exhausted” by venturing into the controversial issue, but disagreed. .
“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.”
NASA believes this is a first step in trying to explain the mysterious sightings in the sky known as UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena.
The study will begin this fall and will last nine months and will cost 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 UAPs are likely to have multiple explanations.
“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 that we do not know what constitutes 95% of the universe. So there are things we don’t understand. “
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