NASA officials announced plans to officially recruit scientists for the study of 'unidentified phenomena'. The hunt for UFOs is a subject that has garnered a lot of attention from Pentagon and efforts are already underway to make sense of such sightings.
According to the space agency, the study is scheduled to begin this fall and will continue for the next nine months, the cost of it will be around $100,000.
As per South China Morning Post, Daniel Evans, the NASA scientist and coordinating head of the study, told reporters that the main aim of the project will be to identify new ways to gather more data , analyze available data and dig deep on the findings on a scientific level.
The space agency has mostly investigated for signs of 'intelligent civilizations' on other planets but this will be the first time when the NASA scientists will be concentrating to study an unexplained phenomenon in Earth's skies.
"Over the decades, NASA has answered the call to tackle some of the most perplexing mysteries we know of, and this is no different," said Evans.
As explained by Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of NASA's science mission directorate, the project is not just focusing to 'demystify' UFOs, it will also attenuate the sightings while ensuring the safety of the aircraft, with the help of its broad range of scientific tools, Washington Post reported.
The announcement comes after the Congress UFO hearing last month, where reports of unidentified flying objects – now called unexplained aerial phenomena or UAPs by the military – were discussed. While there was no evidence of aliens there were however, some 400 sightings of UAPs reported in the 2021 military reports.
The lack of specifics, of whether the objects were some kind of advanced aerospace technology from Russia or China or if they were from outer space, did not lead to a definitive conclusion of the hearing. This is when NASA steps into the picture to "draw scientific conclusions" on the events.
With a strict application of scientific methods , the space agency is now planning to study UAPs and actively begin the search for signs of life beyond Earth.
NASA's study will be independent of the Pentagon's Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, but the space agency will continue to coordinate with the government as and when it deems necessary.
