Will we ever know where UFOs come from?
NASA announced on Thursday the launch in the fall of a multi-month investigation into these unidentified aerial phenomena.
There is no evidence that these phenomena have an extraterrestrial origin, she stressed from the outset.
But the subject could not be more important, because it concerns both national security and that of air traffic.
After American intelligence last year, it is thus the turn of the American space agency to look into the question.
Nasa wishes in passing to de-stigmatize the subject.
“One of the results of this study for me would be to make everyone understand (…) that the scientific process is valid to treat all problems, including this one”, declared during a press conference. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at NASA.
He said he himself decided to launch this investigation.
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This investigation will be carried out by eminent scientists and experts in aeronautics.
Scheduled to start at the beginning of the fall, it should last nine months and lead to a report made public.
Three objectives are announced: to gather the data that already exists, to determine what is missing and how best to collect it, and to decide with which tools to analyze it in the future.
Gather all existing data
“We have a very limited compilation of these observations today,” said David Spergel, astrophysicist placed at the head of this work.
“It makes it difficult to draw conclusions.
However, mountains of data actually exist, according to NASA experts, who wish to collect them from governments, private companies, associations or even individuals.
In June 2021, US intelligence claimed in a long-awaited report that there was no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials, while acknowledging that dozens of phenomena observed by military pilots could not be explained.
According to the Pentagon, an increasing number of unidentified objects have been reported in the sky over the past 20 years.
"I don't think anyone has ever looked systematically at unidentified aerial phenomena in the past," said Daniel Evans, in charge of coordinating the study for the space agency, on Thursday.
But "over the decades, NASA has answered the call to tackle some of the most baffling mysteries we know, and this is no different."
