NASA is involved in the UFO hunt, a top space agency official said on Thursday, forming a team to look into “observations of events that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.” The space agency would offer a scientific perspective on efforts already under way by the Pentagon and intelligence services to understand dozens of such sightings, said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s mission of science, in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences. , Engineering. , and Medicine. He said it was a “high-risk, high-impact” investigation that the space agency should not shy away from, even if it was a controversial area of study. The announcement comes just weeks after a rare and historic hearing before Congress over sightings of what the Department of Defense calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, better known as UFOs, and a report released last year by the director of the National Intelligence Service that attributed more of 140 flying objects. which officials could not identify. On May 17, Congress held a hearing on UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), better known as UFOs. Here’s why. (Video: Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi / The Washington Post) The nine-page report and hearing in Congress, however, were brief in detail and did not draw definitive conclusions about what the flying objects were, many of which were identified by Navy pilots. Officials said they found no evidence that the objects were some kind of advanced aerospace technology developed by China, Russia or other nations. There was also no evidence that it 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 about national security but also about the safety of air flights. He also said, “There is no evidence that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin.” However, NASA has said it wants to apply scientific rigor to a troubling issue that has stuck for generations. The UAP study is part of the body’s mission to look for signs of life beyond Earth, from studying water on Mars to exploring the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, the agency said. “NASA believes that the tools of scientific discovery are powerful and valid here,” 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 very definition of science. That’s what we’re doing”. NASA will be led by David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York and former chair of astrophysics at Princeton University; The study will take about nine months, NASA said, and will be independent of the Pentagon’s efforts. “There is possible national security and counterintelligence [impacts], that this is not what we do to live. “And we’re not going to do that at NASA,” Zurbuchen said. However, the agency is studying the atmosphere and aeronautics, he said, and there is concern that “the airspace is becoming more and more crowded with many different types of aircraft.” The report, released by the director of the National Intelligence Service, found that “some UAPs appeared to be stationary in high winds, moving against the wind, winding sharply or moving at a considerable speed, with no distinct means of propulsion,” the report said. exhibition. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems were processing radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP observations.” Speaking to the House Subcommittee on Counter-Terrorism, Counterintelligence and Nuclear Weapons last month, Ronald S. Moultrie, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, told the Pentagon that flying objects that seem to defy the laws of physics. “We know that members of our services have encountered unknown aerial phenomena,” he told the bipartisan panel. “We are committed to trying to determine their origin.” In an interview with the Washington Post last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had seen the secret UAP report while serving in the Senate. “The hair stood on the back of my neck,” he said.
