On Wednesday, May 23, a NASA panel researching “unidentified aerial phenomena” will hold its first public meeting. In the following weeks, a report on such reported occurrences as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) is planned to be presented.
Who are the members of NASA’s ‘UFO panel’?
It is a 16-member group made up of professionals in subjects such as physics and astrobiology. It was established in June 2022 to investigate unclassified UFO encounters and related data gathered from the United States federal government and private sectors.
The focus of Wednesday’s four-hour public session “is to hold final deliberations before the agency’s independent study team publishes a report this summer,” NASA said while announcing the meeting.
What does NASA’s report on UFO encounters mean?
This is the first investigation of its kind done by the US space agency on the issue, which has sparked great interest throughout the world.
The NASA probe is distinct from a newly formalized Pentagon-based examination into unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, which members of the US military have recorded in recent years.
These activities mark a watershed moment in the government’s response to reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.
The word UFOs, long associated with flying saucers and aliens, has been supplanted in the eyes of the US government by Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
“There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA had said in announcing the panel’s formation in June 2022.
But while announcing Wednesday’s meeting NASA said that it defines the UAPs “as observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.”
Meanwhile, the chief of the Pentagon’s newly formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), according to Reuters, has stated that the presence of intelligent alien life has not been ruled out.