NASA will join the Pentagon's efforts in searching for unidentified flying objects (UFOs) because "they are of both national security and aviation safety concern."
The space administration said Thursday in a statement that the limited number of observed phenomena so far makes it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about their nature, but "there is no evidence that they are of extraterrestrial origin."
"NASA believes that the tools of scientific discovery are powerful and apply here as well," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
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“We have access to a wide range of observations of Earth from space, and that is the lifeblood of scientific research.
We have the tools and equipment that can help us improve our understanding of the unknown,” she added.
"Given the dearth of observations, our first task is simply
to assemble the strongest data set
we can," said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York, and former head of the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton University. , in New Jersey.
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NASA expects the study, which will begin in the early fall, to last about nine months.
It will benefit from the advice of experts from the scientific, aeronautical and data analysis communities.
Last month the first public hearing on UFOs was held in Congress.
The Pentagon said it analyzed hundreds of reports and admitted that in 11 cases they came close to hitting planes.
Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott W. Bray said then that since the publication last year of a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a task force to study these phenomena reported that its database had grown. up to “approximately
400 reports”
of UFOs.
According to that report, the government was unable to explain 143 of the 144 cases of unexplained aerial phenomena reported by military pilots between 2004 and 2021.
Since the early 2000s, an "increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft or objects," Bray said, have been seen in military-controlled training areas and other designated airspace.
