NASA announced on Thursday, June 9, that they are putting together an independent team of researchers who will study the sightings of unidentified fying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). They plan to study UAP sightings from the scientific perspective and stressed that they have yet found any evidence that will link UAP to extraterrestrial origins.
Astrophysicist David Spergel from NASA's Science Mission Directorate will lead the team to identify the UAP based on the available data and figure out a way to best capture UAPs in the future. The American space agency noted that the limitations of the sightings make it hard to come up with logical explanations for them, hence NASA's plan of a team that will study UAP.
UAP is of Great Interest to National Security
The announcement comes a year after the US government's report detailing the experiences of the Navy of some UAP. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence compiled these incidents and submitted the report, Reuters reported.
NASA's science unit chief Thomas Zurbuchen said in a press conference that they are looking at Earth in new ways and also looking at the sky in new ways.
"What we're really trying to do here is start an investigation without an outcome in mind," the news outlet quoted Zurbuchen as saying.
The space agency also echoed the sentiments of the US officials who described UAP as an issue for national security and air safety. NASA said in the news release that establishing which the UAP sightings were natural provides a crucial step towards identifying or mitigating such mysterious phenomena, which aligns with NASA's goal of keeping aircraft safe.
Could UAP Sightings From Extraterrestrial Beings
In 2017, New York Times reported that the Pentagon had a classified program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) focused on investigating UAP sightings.
Since then, a whirlwind of interested lawmakers and the media followed the story until the Department of Defense created the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) in 2020 to understand their origins better.
Although NASA has yet to wade into the UAP debate completely, the space agency's administrator Bill Nelson made a number of comments hinting at these sightings as some otherworldly explanation.
According to the Verge, the Pentagon released a report in June 2021 about the potential origins of UAP. They listed five possible explanations, wherein many of which are more benign, like an airborne clutter and natural atmospheric phenomenon. However, the fifth one says "other" for events and sightings that are impossible to explain.
In May this year, the US Congress held its first public hearing on UAP after more than 50 years. US naval intelligence deputy director Scott Bray claimed during the meeting that the UAPTF had collected 400 reports of UAP sightings and presented two videos, one of which is a few seconds long with a small spherical object moving quickly across the camera.
However, Bray emphasizes that these sightings do not necessarily point to extraterrestrial beings. As of now, there is no evidence that the UAP sightings were of extraterrestrial origins.
Zurbuchen said that it is now NASA's new research team's responsibility to identify UAP and provide more data about them that will help the space agency in improving their scientific talent, satellites, and sensors monitoring Earth's climate and atmospheric conditions.
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