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NASA is joining the UFO hunt, a senior space agency official said Thursday, forming a team to investigate “observations of events that cannot be identified as airplanes or known natural phenomena.”
The space agency will provide a scientific perspective on the efforts already underway by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to make sense of dozens of such observations, said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s scientific missions directorate, during a speech to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and medicine. He said the space agency should not deviate from “high-risk and impactful” research, even if it is a controversial area of research.
The announcement comes just weeks after a rare and historic hearing before Congress on observations of what the Department of Defense calls unidentified aerial phenomena, better known as UFOs, and a report released last year by the director of national intelligence cataloging more than 140 flying sites. . which employees have failed to identify.
On May 17, Congress held a hearing on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), better known as UFOs. That’s why. (Video: Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi / Washington Post)
However, the nine-page report and the congressional hearing did not provide details and did not draw any definitive conclusions about what the flying objects were, many of which were spotted by naval aviators. Officials said they found no evidence that the sites were any advanced aerospace technology developed by China, Russia or other nations. 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 about national security but also about air safety. He also says: “There is no evidence that UAPs are aliens.
However, NASA has said it wants to apply scientific rigor to an annoying issue that has been a fixation for generations. The study of UAPs is part of the agency’s mission to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, from studying water on Mars to studying the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, the agency said.
“NASA believes that scientific discovery tools are powerful and are being applied here,” Zurbuchen said in a statement. “We have the tools and the team to help us improve our understanding of the unknown. This is the very definition of what science is. That’s what we do. “
NASA’s efforts will be led by David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York and former chairman of the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton University, and Daniel Evans, assistant deputy administrator for research at NASA’s Research Missions Directorate. The investigation will last about nine months, NASA said, and will be independent of the Pentagon’s efforts.
“There is potential national security and counterintelligence [impacts]that we are not dealing with this. And we will not go into that at NASA, “Zurbuchen said. But the agency is studying the atmosphere and aeronautics, he said, and has concerns that “the airspace is increasingly crowded with many different types of aircraft.”
The report, published by the Director of National Intelligence, found that “some UAPs appear to remain stationary in upwind winds, moving against the wind, maneuvering sharply or moving at significant speeds without noticeable means of propulsion,” the report said. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP observations.
Testifying before the House of Representatives subcommittee on counter-terrorism, counterintelligence and counter-proliferation intelligence last month, Ronald C. Moultrie, deputy secretary of defense for intelligence and security, said the Pentagon was collecting eyewitness accounts of mysterious flying objects contradict the laws of physics.
“We know that our servicemen have encountered unidentified air phenomena,” he told the bipartisan group. “We are committed to trying to determine their origin.”
In an interview with The Washington Post last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he saw the UAP classified report while serving in the Senate. “My hair rose on my neck,” he said.
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