NASA joins search for UFOs

The announcement comes a few weeks after the Historic Congressional Hearing Watching what the Department of Defense calls unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as Unidentified Flying Objects, and A report released last year by the Director of National Intelligence who has cataloged more than 140 flying objects that officials have not been able to identify.

The Nine-page report However, the congressional hearing was lacking in detail and did not reach any definitive conclusions about what the flying objects were, many of which were spotted by naval pilots. Officials said they found no evidence that the objects were some kind of advanced space technology developed by China, Russia or other countries. There was also no evidence that they came from extraterrestrial sources.

The limited number of such observations makes it difficult to “draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events,” NASA said in a statement. The agency said it was concerned not only with national security but also with aviation safety. She also said, “There is no evidence that the unused atmospheric programs were originally extraterrestrial.”

However, NASA said it wanted to apply scientific rigor to a troublesome issue that had been proven for generations. The study of UAPs fits with the agency’s mission to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, from Studying water on Mars The agency said to explore the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

“NASA believes that the tools for scientific discovery are powerful and can be applied here as well,” Zurbuchen said in a statement. “We have the tools and the team that can help us improve our understanding of the unknown. That’s the definition of what science is. That’s what we do.”

Briefing reporters after the speech, Zurbuchen said he wanted to push NASA to undertake risky projects, even if the scientific community did not consider them mainstream.

“Obviously, in a traditional scientific setting, talking about some of these issues could be considered a bit of a sale, or a kind of talking about things that aren’t actual science,” he said. “I’m just vehemently opposed to that. I really believe that the quality of science is not only measured by the output that comes from behind it, but also by the questions we want to address with science.”

NASA’s efforts will be led by David Spiergel, president of Simmons Corporation in New York City and former chief of astrophysics at Princeton University, and Daniel Evans, associate deputy director for research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. the study, They’ll start in the fall, will last about nine months and cost no more than $100,000, NASA said. Zurbuchen said it would be independent of the Pentagon’s efforts.

“There is potential national security and counterintelligence [impacts]It’s not what we do for a living. “We’re not going to get into that at NASA,” Zurbuchen said. But he said the agency is studying the atmosphere and aeronautics, and there is concern that “the airspace is increasingly crowded with many different types of air vehicles.”

Spergill said there is no working hypothesis involved in the study that would explain the UAPs. “I would say the only preconceived notion I came up with was that you should be open to the idea that we are looking at several different phenomena,” he said. “There is a wide range of what could be responsible for these events.”

He added, “This is a phenomenon that we do not understand. We want to collect more data about this phenomenon.”

The report from the Director of National Intelligence found that “some UAPs appeared to be stationary in the winds high, moving upwind, maneuvering abruptly, or moving very quickly, with no apparent means of thrust,” the report found. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed the radio frequency (RF) energy associated with the UAP sighting.”

In his testimony before the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and Counterproliferation last month, Ronald S. MoultrieThe Pentagon’s undersecretary for intelligence and security said the Pentagon is collecting eyewitness accounts of mysterious flying objects that appear to defy the laws of physics.

“We know our service members have encountered unknown weather phenomena,” he told the bipartisan committee. “We are committed to making an effort to identify their origins.”

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he saw the classified UAP report when he was serving in the Senate. He said: The hair on the back of my neck stood.

Shane Harris contributed to this report.