[ad_1]
NASA has held its first public meeting on UFOs, a year after launching a study into unexplained sightings.
The space agency televised the four-hour-long hearing on Wednesday, featuring an independent panel of experts at NASA headquarters in Washington, with the public taking part remotely.
The team included 16 scientists and other experts selected by NASA including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space.
As it happened: Experts trolled online during UFO sightings meeting
The group looked at what unclassified information is available on the subject and how much more is needed to understand what’s going on in the sky, according to panel chair David Spergel.
No secret military data, such as anything surrounding the suspected spy balloons from China spotted flying over the US earlier this year, was included.
However the panel said they had seen a spike in reported sightings since then, with the US Department of Defence’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office – which is also investigating separately to NASA – receiving around 800 sightings so far, but only a tiny fraction of those contain signals which could be deemed “anomalous”.
During the meeting the experts were quizzed on a range of topics including why they have taken to calling them UAPs rather than UFOs and what NASA would do if they actually discovered extra-terrestrials.
Dr Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research, said that they don’t use the term UFO (unidentified flying object) any more due to the stigma attached to the term.
He said that they had instead opted to use the term unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) because the topic is a “serious business”.
[ad_2]
