Washington, Sept 14 (EFE).- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on Thursday that it would create a special department to study Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) after determining that UFOs need to be adequately investigated. It also promised transparency in any potential discovery.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the agency had appointed a new director – whose identity was not revealed – to make sense of the frequently encountered anomalous phenomena.
“Most UAP sightings result in minimal data, which makes it even more difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UAPs,” Nelson said during the briefing.
The NASA administrator also mentioned that it will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to look for anomalies in the sky and continue the search for habitability.
NASA’s Science Mission Director, Nicola Fox, said, “UAPs are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries.
“While there are numerous eyewitness accounts and visuals associated with UAPs, they are not consistent, detailed, and not curated observations that can be used to make definitive scientific conclusions about the nature and origin of UAPs,” she added.
NASA reached these conclusions following the release of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, a study commissioned by a team of independent scientists, which found that UAP detection is currently mostly incidental, captured by sensors not designed or calibrated for the purpose, and needing complete metadata.
The report explains that the origin of many UAPs remains to be determined due to incomplete data archiving and preservation.
The experts, therefore, recommend that NASA play a leading role in the overall executive branch effort to understand UAPs, using its extensive experience and Earth observation satellites to provide better data and evidence rooted in the scientific method.
The new director of the UAP Specialist Division will centralize communications, resources, and data analysis capabilities across the federal government to build a robust database for evaluating all future data.
“The director will leverage NASA’s expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and space observations, tools that will support and enhance the government’s initiative,” he added.
COMMITMENT TO TRANSPARENCY
At the press conference, Nelson – a former Democratic senator who in 1986 became the second member of Congress to travel to space – denied that the US executive branch has been less than transparent about the phenomena that have been found and cannot be identified, and insisted that so far NASA has found no evidence that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin.
“The mission of NASA is to find out the unknown. I’ve said several times in my comments today that we are open and will be transparent about this,” Nelson said.
He also addressed that there is “so much concern” about data being classified and “locked up” by the US government. Still, he reiterated his commitment that NASA will be open about UAPs.
However, he acknowledged that he could not make assurances for other government departments involved in UFO analysis.
In July, a US Congressional subcommittee asked the government to report its data on unidentified flying objects after hearing testimony from former Army personnel who claimed to have seen them and said that authorities were keeping evidence.
Subcommittee members urged the US government to establish a transparent and secure system for reporting these incidents to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Subcommittee members urged the US government to establish a transparent and secure system so that these incidents can be reported to authorities without damaging the reputations of witnesses.
A MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY
Several of the experts who participated in the study were present at Thursday’s press conference, including Dan Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, who said that understanding UAP is vital because it provides an opportunity to expand our understanding of the world and is also necessary for national security issues.
“The presence of UAPs raises serious concerns about the safety of our skies, and this nation must determine whether these phenomena pose a potential risk to the safety of the airspace,” he said.
Studying UFOs and creating this new division will also be essential in moving away from viewing UAPs as sensational and toward studying them as purely scientific phenomena.
Nelson said, “We at NASA are trying to shift [the conversation] from sensationalism to science,” and promised that everything NASA finds will be shared transparently. EFE
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