NASA’s team of scientific experts tasked with studying Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) is meeting in Washington today in order to discuss the types of data the space agency can collect and evaluate to learn more about the UAPs.
NASA formed a group of 16 experts last year, drawing from scientists with backgrounds in astrophysics, oceanography, astronomy, and other fields, in order to make recommendations to the agency about how to study the phenomenon. The reality is since scientists have little idea what these UAPs are, where they come from, and who or what might be behind them, there’s no traditional scientific starting point for data research.
“It provides us an opportunity to expand our understanding of the world around us,” said Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA. “As an organization dedicated to exploring the unknown, this work is in our DNA.”
The meeting comes after U.S. defense officials released videos of unidentified flying objects last year during the first congressional hearing on the subject in more than half a century.
One clip showed the view from the cockpit of an aircraft and a split second flash of a spherical object flying to the right of the aircraft. Military officials said they have been unable to explain what the object is.
NASA said the lack of high-quality observations of UAP make it difficult to draw scientific conclusions to explain the nature of such events.
The NASA panel is the public face of the effort to dig into the mystery surrounding UFOs. There’s another group formed by the Pentagon that is looking at some of the more classified aspects of UAPs. They will work in parallel with the NASA group.
The NASA study is separate from a newly formalized Pentagon-based investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, documented in recent years by military aviators and analyzed by U.S. defense and intelligence officials.
The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts — both undertaken with some semblance of public scrutiny — highlight a turning point for the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and discrediting sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.
What kind of data can the space agency and the military use to unlock some of the UAPs’ secrets? There is some data that may never be released because the “National Technical Means” in gathering the data are among the most closely held secrets in the government. James Bamford’s Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency details some of the eye-popping capabilities of our intelligence agencies.
But the bulk intelligence gathering by ordinary citizens, trained observers like the police, and the array of cameras and sensors employed by public and private entities will supply a formidable database of information that the NASA experts will be combing through for the next several months.
A report from the NASA team is expected later this summer.
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