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(Trends Wide) — NASA has selected a team of 16 scientists and experts who will delve into the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena, more popularly known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs. The independent study began on Monday.
The group includes experts in numerous disciplines, including astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, politics, and planetary science, as well as retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, former fighter pilot and test pilot, and retired US Navy captain. USA
The space agency, which first announced it would form the group in June, previously revealed the team would be led by astrophysicist David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York City.
The new group will not necessarily seek to determine exactly what unidentified aerial phenomena are, which have been seen moving through restricted military airspace for the past several decades. Rather, the team will seek to analyze exactly how it is best for NASA to approach a deeper study of the phenomenon.
The space agency has already noted that the limited number of observations of unidentified aerial phenomena has made it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events.
“Without access to an extensive data set, it is almost impossible to verify or explain any observation, therefore the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of non-airborne phenomena. identified,” according to a NASA press release.
There have been several studies of unidentified aerial phenomena conducted by various arms of the US government, including a Pentagon report that was declassified in June 2021, although none have given the public a clear answer as to what the aerial phenomena could be. unidentified. NASA officials have been thinking about how to study unidentified aerial phenomena in a formal way for a long time, but they wanted to make sure they approached it the right way, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in an email. June.
This study, which is expected to last around nine months, will also be completely declassified and in the public domain.
“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA,” Zurbuchen said in a statement Friday. “Understanding the data we have on unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable explainable.”
Specifically, the team will search for data on “events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena, from a scientific perspective,” the agency said.
Unidentified aerial phenomena are of interest, NASA said, from a safety and security perspective. There was no evidence that the unidentified aerial phenomena are of extraterrestrial origin, NASA emphasized during the initial announcement in June.
the search for life
The space agency has long been tasked with finding life elsewhere, which is why astrobiology programs are part of its focus. The Mars Perseverance rover is currently searching for signs of ancient life that may have once existed on the red planet, while future missions are underway to search for signs of life on ocean worlds in our solar system.
The agency will approach the study of unidentified aerial phenomena as it would any other scientific study, taking a data-poor field and making it worthy of scientific investigation and analysis.
“Many times something that seemed almost magical turned out to be a new scientific effect,” Zurbuchen said in June.
Given the aviation safety and national security concerns that have been raised with unidentified aerial phenomena, scientists want to see the observations and establish whether they are natural or need a different explanation.
Talking about unidentified aerial phenomena in a traditional scientific setting may be disparaged or considered unrelated to science, but Zurbuchen has said he is “vehemently opposed to that.”
“I truly believe that the quality of science is not only measured by the results that support it, but also by the questions that we are willing to address with science,” he said earlier this year.
Like other standard NASA grant review panels, the estimated budget for this project ranges from tens of thousands of dollars to no more than $100,000, said Daniel Evans, associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The NASA.
From the outset, it is difficult to anticipate what the study will reveal. “We should be open to the idea that we’re looking at several different phenomena,” Spergel said earlier this year.
“I think we need to approach all of these questions with a sense of humility,” Spergel said. “I have spent most of my career as a cosmologist. I can tell you that we don’t know what makes up 95% of the universe. So there are things we don’t understand. I hope that this study will help us better understand these phenomena. But at the end of the day, we can conclude that we still don’t understand a lot of aspects of them and maybe we have a roadmap on how to progress.”
Ross Levitt contributed to this report.
