A Nasa panel recommended in a report issued on Thursday that the US space agency increase its efforts to gather information on unidentified objects in the sky — labeled “unidentified anomalous phenomenon,” or UAP, by the government — and play a larger role in helping the Pentagon detect them.
The agency, in a statement accompanying the report, said it was evaluating the independent study team’s findings and recommendations but nonetheless created a new role, director of UAP research.
The Nasa panel, comprising experts in scientific fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, issued the report after holding its first public meeting in June. UAP are better known to the public as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.
“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.
“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.—AFP
