Instead, they’re called “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs), which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but is considered more accurate.
UAPs include anything flying or floating that can’t be “identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena – from a scientific perspective,” NASA says.
“There is no evidence UAPs are extra-terrestrial in origin,” NASA says.
The nine-month project is considered important to national security and air safety, the agency reports.
“The study will focus on identifying available data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use that data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward,” NASA said in a June 9 news release.
“The limited number of observations of UAPs currently makes it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. ... Establishing which events are natural provides a key first step to identifying or mitigating such phenomena.”
The work starts in the fall and the team will use NASA’s broad range of resources on the ground and in the sky.
Astrophysicist David Spergel will lead the project, which NASA says is not part of “the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force or its successor, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.”
However, NASA says it will coordinate with other government departments on how to apply what it has learned “on the nature and origin of unidentified aerial phenomena.” NASA also intends to share its discoveries with the public.
“Given the paucity of observations, our first task is simply to gather the most robust set of data that we can,” Spergel said in the news release.
“We will be identifying what data – from civilians, government, non-profits, companies – exists, what else we should try to collect, and how to best analyze it.”
While the UAPs are not considered extraterrestrial, NASA notes it has other missions in progress focused “on the origins, evolution, and distribution of life beyond Earth.”
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