Last month, the US government held intelligence hearings about UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) for the first time in over 50 years. And now NASA has put together its own taskforce to study UAPs, which are called UFOs. All of NASA’s data is available to the public, something the agency says will be true of their UFO taskforce report as well.
This comes after the April 2020 statement that UFOs are real. The government agencies are very careful to disconnect them from any extraterrestrial activity. There is reason to think any of the sightings are due to aliens.
We saw the NASA news on The Verge. For more, the agency’s informational teleconference is on YouTube. The takeaway from last month’s government hearings was to de-stigmatize UAPs. If they’re accepted as real and important to identify, that pilots are more likely to report them.
If the UFOs are actually espionage attempts, the government wants to know about them. Drones capable of spying on military operations are a leading suspect for some of these sightings. Though many are ruled out as mirages or even quirks of recording equipment.
Some of the Congressional hearing, which we heard about from BuzzFeed News, was public while the rest happened behind closed doors. Rather than some sort of conspiracy, this was to keep classified information under wraps. But redacted CIA documents and this interactive map of UFO sightings in the United States will likely keep the alien conspiracy alive for years to come.
Back in November 2021, the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). Which we wished had a cooler acronym, like SHIELD. No word on the NASA taskforce’s acronym yet.
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.