The possibility of extraterrestrial visits to Earth is being taken more and more seriously in the United States. NASA announced this Thursday (9) the launch, in the second half, of an investigation into unidentified flying objects.
There is no evidence that such phenomena have an extraterrestrial origin, said the American space agency. However, the issue concerns both national security and air traffic.
After the US intelligence community released a report on the topic last year, it is now NASA’s turn to investigate the matter.
“One of the results of this study would be to make everyone understand […] that the scientific process is valid for addressing all problems, including this one,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator, at a news conference.
Zurbuchen added that he himself decided to initiate the investigation, led by renowned scientists and aeronautics experts.
As probes and rovers roam parts of the solar system in search of fossils of ancient microbes and astronomers look for the “technological signatures” on distant planets that would indicate the possible existence of intelligent civilizations, this is the first time that NASA will investigate unexplained phenomena in the skies. of our own planet.
Scheduled to begin in early autumn, work is expected to last nine months, resulting in the production of a report that will be made available to the public.
The goals are to collect data that already exists, determine what is missing, how best to collect it, and decide what tools will be needed to analyze it in the future.
“Today, we have a very limited set of these observations,” said David Spergel, an astrophysicist who will lead the work. “This makes it difficult to draw conclusions”, he considered.
According to NASA experts, there is a mountain of data from governments, private companies, associations and even individuals, but they need to be gathered. The budget allocated to the project will not exceed US$ 100,000.
In June 2021, American intelligence stated in a report that there was no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials. He recognized, however, that dozens of phenomena witnessed by military pilots could not be explained.
According to the Pentagon, reports of sightings of unidentified objects in the skies have increased dramatically over the past 20 years.
“I don’t think anyone has ever systematically looked at unidentified aerial phenomena in the past,” Daniel Evans, in charge of coordinating the research for the space agency, said on Thursday.
However, “Over the decades, NASA has responded to calls to tackle some of the most perplexing mysteries we know, and this is no different.”
