NASA releases new study report on UFOs, shares findings: 'Origin of numerous UAP...'

The US space agency NASA on Thursday released a new study report on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) but said that there were currently a limited number of high-quality observations of such phenomena which made it impossible to draw firm scientific conclusions about their nature.
 
Last year, the space agency formed an independent team to examine such flying objects from a scientific perspective. Releasing the report, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson today announced that the agency was appointing a director of UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) Research.

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"At NASA, it's in our DNA to explore – and to ask why things are the way they are. I want to thank the Independent Study Team for providing insight on how NASA can better study and analyze UAP in the future," Nelson said, adding that the new director of UAP Research will develop and oversee the implementation of NASA's scientific vision for UAP research, including using the agency's expertise to work with other agencies to analyse UAP and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies.

NASA said that the external study recommends that the space agency use its open-source resources, extensive technological expertise, data analysis techniques, federal and commercial partnerships, and Earth-observing assets to curate a better and robust dataset for understanding future UAP.

The independent study team, set up outside of NASA, used unclassified data from civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources to inform their findings and recommendations in the report, the space agency said. "There are currently a limited number of high-quality observations of UAP, which currently make it impossible to draw firm scientific conclusions about their nature."

In its report, the independent team said that at present, the detection of UAP was often serendipitous, captured by sensors that were not designed or calibrated for this purpose, and which lacked comprehensive metadata. "Coupled with incomplete data archiving and curation, this means that the origin of numerous UAP remains uncertain," the team said.

"The importance of detecting UAP with multiple, well-calibrated sensors is thus paramount, and accordingly we recommend that NASA leverage its considerable expertise in this domain to potentially utilize multispectral or hyperspectral data as part of a rigorous data acquisition campaign," the report said.

Dr Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator at NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said that unidentified flying objects are one of the greatest mysteries. Observations of objects in our skies that cannot be identified as balloons, aircraft, or natural known phenomena have been spotted worldwide, yet there are limited high-quality observations, she said.

"Despite numerous accounts and visuals, the absence of consistent, detailed, and curated observations means we do not presently have the body of data needed to make definitive, scientific conclusions about UAP." 

In the introduction section of the report, the independent study team writes that many credible witnesses, often military aviators, have reported seeing objects they did not recognise over the US airspace. "Most of these events have since been explained, but a small handful cannot be immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena."