NASA is finally talking about UFOs: ‘This is a serious business’

After decades of shrugging off UFO sightings, NASA has gone from being the leading alien denier to taking its first steps to formally investigate these mysteries in the sky.

The US space agency held a public meeting of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Study Team(opens in a new tab), an independent panel of 16 experts tasked with addressing the many unexplained reports of glowing orbs, dashes and dots thrown, and bloops that seem to transmute into more bloops. Scott Kelly, a former astronaut who spent about a year in space, is among the members.

Team members emphasized that they have no convincing evidence that any strange objects reported from the sky are actually aliens. NASA chose to air the meeting on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 as a show of transparency, an effort to combat beliefs that the government is hiding “the truth” about space visitors.

“Science is evidence-based. It thrives on scrutiny, demands reproducibility and, above all, objectivity,” said Dan Evans, NASA’s deputy assistant administrator for science research. “From a scientific perspective, we don’t come in with an agenda. We come in needing a road map.”

But in case you didn’t have four hours to spare in the middle of a work week for the meeting, Mashable has distilled the key points.

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What are UAPs and why doesn’t NASA call them UFOs?

Most Americans know these strange sightings in the sky as UFOs, short for Unidentified Flying Objects, defined as things that cannot be immediately explained as a natural occurrence or an airplane. But the study team is using a new acronym: UAP.

The panelists said the Pentagon likely adopted “UAP” to distance the subject from the stigma attached to UFOs, often stereotyped as delusions of alien encounters. Old Hollywood ran with the idea and put flying saucers in a slew of sci-fi movies.

The acronym UAP used to stand for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena(opens in a new tab), but the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into federal law in December, changed the A to stand for “anomalous.” The goal was also to capture strange sightings on land and underwater. But since most of the UAPs reported so far have been in the air, the NASA panel will focus on airspace.

Why is it difficult for NASA to study UAP?

Study team members emphasized that their biggest challenge in studying UAP is stigma. Anecdotally, some said commercial pilots are reluctant to report strange sightings to authorities: fewer reports lead to sparse data.

Moving forward with NASA’s involvement has its problems, said David Spergel, an astrophysicist and chairman of the study team, who described two staunch camps: one convinced that strange things happen in the sky that defy physics and technology all the time, and another convinced that everything is explainable and there is no value in looking at it.

“You have one community that says the haystack is full of gold, and another community that says it’s crazy to look for anything interesting in a haystack; there’s nothing there,” Spergel told reporters after the meeting.

Continuing with the needle in a haystack metaphor, Spergel said the first scientific step is to learn and characterize the properties of the haystack, something he believes is lacking when it comes to strange aerial phenomena.

“If you understand it well and how you measure it, and you observe it well, you can find things,” he said.

NASA faces challenges to study UAPs amid UFO stigma.
Credit: Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

How many UFO sightings has NASA reviewed?

More than 800 reports have been collected over 27 years, with between two and five percent actually unidentified, said Sean Kirkpatrick, chief of the Parallel Office of Anomaly Resolution for all domains at the pentagon Most have turned out to be mundane objects(opens in a new tab), like balloons, drones and weather. But that’s a tricky question because it’s not the NASA study team’s job to investigate the reports.

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Many cases of UAP go unexplained, members said, not necessarily because experts are dealing with something unknown, but because the images, videos and data are of such poor quality, there is not enough information to draw conclusions The team’s goal is to make recommendations to NASA on how, with a scientific approach, it can contribute to the understanding of UAP reports in the future. This, they believe, is an important objective in determining whether any UAP poses risks to aviation safety.

“The main goal of this incredible team of experts is not to go back and look at grainy images of UAPs, but to give us a road map to guide us for future analysis,” Evans said.

NASA’s work will focus on unclassified material and coordinate with the Pentagon’s concurrent investigation.

Many cases of UAP go unexplained, members said, not necessarily because experts are dealing with something unknown, but because the images, videos and data are of such poor quality, there is not enough information to draw conclusions
Credit: Department of Defense video screenshot

Why does NASA say it doesn’t have good UAP data?

Cameras are usually designed to take photos during the day and are not optimized for nighttime images. Telescopes designed to operate at night can also pick up light reflections that cause optical illusions and strange artifacts.

Although many UAP sightings were collected from military sensors, their technology does not match that used by scientists and national intelligence, according to members of the study team.

The panel offered them as some examples of how the equipment that collects the data can be difficult to analyze.

“DoD sensors have a purpose,” Kirkpatrick said. “They have to identify an object that is known and put a weapon on it.”

This relatively recent group of three sightings in the sky was reported by a pilot as a UAP. After analysis, investigators determined that the objects were distant commercial aircraft in flight before landing.
Credit: NASA / YouTube screenshot

The US space agency held a public meeting of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Study Team, an independent group of 16 experts on May 31, 2023.
Credit: NASA

What will the UAP study team recommend to NASA?

A final report is expected later this summer(opens in a new tab), but the panelists hinted at some of their ideas. First, the team has recognized that none of the UAP study’s challenges can be solved in its short nine-month lifespan. Members are likely to urge NASA to establish a permanent office.

“If you don’t institutionalize something at NASA, the fear is that it could disappear too quickly,” said Mike Gold, executive vice president of aerospace manufacturer Redwire Space and a former NASA leader on the team.

They can also advise on the development of a mobile phone application that can pool data from many citizen scientists and upload it to a designated website. Phones don’t just take photos, they encode environmental information such as GPS signals, time stamps, and even some gravity measurements. With multiple phones capturing data, scientists could infer the location and speed of objects. Combined with radar and satellite data, it could be a powerful tool.

But they are not likely to recommend a dedicated satellite for UAP surveillance. One big enough to cover the entire planet wouldn’t offer high enough image resolution to be useful, Spergel told reporters after the meeting.