NASA study rules out extra-terrestrial origin of UFOs, unnamed new chief to lead further research

Bill Nelson, Administrator ofNASA, said on Thursday (September 14) that the space agency's independent study team set up to look into UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they are lately being called, did not find evidence that theyhadany extraterrestrial origin. The report by the team which was set up last year has now been made public on the NASA website.

Nelson, however, said that the finding does not mean that the space agency is denying the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe. He even said that personally he believes that extraterrestrial life existed somewhere in the universe which has 'billions of galaxies'.

Though NASA said there was no extra-terrestrial explanation for the UAPs, the agency is naming a new director of research to look more into the UAPs. The study panel has urged that US increase its efforts to look into what are more commonly called, UFOs.

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NASA said the new director of UAP research will handle "centralised communications, resources and data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAP."

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The space agency however, did not immediately reveal who would be appointed director of UAP research.

The NASA panel which prepared the report that has now been made public, comprised experts from various scientific fields ranging from physics to astrobiology.

"NASA has a variety of existing and planned Earth-and space-observing assets, together with an extensive archive of historic and current data sets, which should be directly leveraged to understand UAP," the report said.

"Although NASA's fleet of Earth-observing satellites typically lack the spatial resolution to detect relatively small objects such as UAP, their state-of-the-art sensors can be directly utilised to probe the state of the local earth, oceanic, and atmospheric conditions that are spatially and temporally coincident with UAPs initially detected via other methods. Thus, NASA's assets can play a vital role by directly determining whether specific environmental factors are associated with certain reported UAP behaviors or occurrences," the report said.

The new report has called UAPs "one of our planet's greatest mysteries."

"Observations of objects in our skies that cannot be identified as balloons, aircraft or natural known phenomena have been spotted worldwide, yet there are limited high-quality observations. The nature of science is to explore the unknown, and data is the language scientists use to discover our universe's secrets," the report stated.

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"Despite numerous accounts and visuals, the absence of consistent, detailed, and curated observations means we do not presently have the body of data needed to make definitive, scientific conclusions about UAP," it added.

The issue of UFOs and UFO sightings has been a topic of popular fascination and even conspiracy theories. The tightlipped response from the US government in past has fuelled wild theories that the government even has aliens in captivity.

In past few years however, the US government has made several disclosures about UFOs, or UAPs as it regards them now.

(With inputs from agencies)

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