NASA‘s new top administrator is directing the agency’s scientists to investigate unidentified flying objects, just a month after taking charge of the agency.
Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, says there is no evidence yet that extraterrestrials have visited Earth, telling CNN on Thursday: ‘I think I would know.’
But, as the Pentagon prepares to release a highly anticipated UFO report that does not rule out an extraterrestrial origin for high-profile military sightings, Nelson agrees that the possibility remains open.
‘We don’t know if it’s extraterrestrial. We don’t know if it’s an enemy. We don’t know if it’s an optical phenomenon,’ Nelson told CNN of encounters filmed by Navy pilots.
‘We don’t think [it’s an optical phenomenon] because of the characteristics that those Navy jet pilots described … And so the bottom line is, we want to know,’ he said.
NASA’s new top administrator Bill Nelson is encouraging the agency’s scientists to investigate unidentified flying objects as they see fit
The so-called Gimbal video, from 2015, shows Navy pilot footage of an unexplained object seen at center as it is tracked as it soars high along the clouds at incredible speeds
NASA press secretary Jackie McGuinness told the outlet that Nelson has not established a formal task force to begin investigating UFOs, but did direct researchers to move forward investigating the topic as they see fit.
‘This is a really interesting phenomenon and Americans are clearly interested in it [so if] the scientists want to investigate, they should,’ said McGuinness.
Meanwhile, Federal Aviation Administration’ database of drone-related incident has been revealed to include some unusual incidents.
The majority of the 10,000 incidents from the past 10 years appear to be related to encounters with commercial drones in restricted airspace — but some suggest advanced capabilities including high-altitude operations.
An analysis of the incident database by The Drive found a curious pattern, with clusters of encounters occurring off the coast of the southeast U.S. and in the southwest.
One report in 2017 cited as many as eight unidentified aircraft operating in sensitive airspace off the East Coast.
It comes as the Pentagon faces a June 25 deadline to release its UFO report to Congress.
A NASA launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida is seen in April. Nelson is asking NASA scientists to investigate UFO sightings as they see fit
Two officials briefed on the report say the U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanation of the ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ — better known as UFOs — spotted by military pilots.
Investigators have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens – but can´t deny a link either.
The report also doesn´t rule out that what pilots have seen may be new technologies developed by other countries. One of the officials said there is no indication the unexplained phenomena are from secret U.S. programs.
The officials were not authorized to discuss the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Findings of the report were first published by The New York Times.
The report examines multiple unexplained sightings from recent years that in some cases have been captured on video of pilots exclaiming about objects flying in front of them.
Congress in December required the Director of National Intelligence to summarize and report on the U.S. government´s knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – better known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.
The effort has included a Defense Department UAP task force established last year. The expected public release of an unclassified version of the report this month will amount to a status report, not the final word, according to one official.
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sue Gough, declined Friday to comment on news stories about the intelligence report. She said the Pentagon’s UAP task force is ‘actively working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the report, and DNI will provide the findings to Congress.’
Video showing an unidentified flying object splashing down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego two years ago has now been corroborated by military radar which shows a ship, the USS Omaha, being swarmed by aerial phenomena in July 2019. The image above shows nine unexplained objects – some of which were traveling at speeds in excess of 160mph
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, when asked about the report, said of the question at first, ‘It´s always a little wacky on Fridays.’ But she added, ‘I will say that we take reports of incursions into our airspace by any aircraft – identified or unidentified – very seriously and investigate each one.’
The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have for decades looked into reports of aircraft or other objects in the sky flying at inexplicable speeds or trajectories.
The U.S. government takes unidentified aerial phenomena seriously given the potential national security risk of an adversary flying novel technology over a military base or another sensitive site, or the prospect of a Russian or Chinese development exceeding current U.S. capabilities. This also is seen by the U.S. military as a security and safety issue, given that in many cases the pilots who reported seeing unexplained aerial phenomena were conducting combat training flights.
The report’s lack of firm conclusions will likely disappoint people anticipating the report, given many Americans’ long-standing fascination with UFOs and the prospect of aliens having reached humankind. A recent story on CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ further bolstered interest in the government report.
Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon´s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said the one official’s claim that there was no indicated link to secret U.S. programs would be significant. But he called on the government to be fully transparent.
‘I think that our tax dollars paid for information and data involving UFOs,’ Elizondo said. ‘And I think it is the U.S. government´s obligation to provide those results to the American people.’
But skeptics caution that the videos and reported sightings have plausible Earth-bound explanations. Mick West, an author, investigator and longtime skeptic of UFO sightings, said he supported the military looking into any possible incursion of U.S. airspace, especially by an adversary.
‘People are conflating this issue with the idea that these UFOs demonstrate amazing physics and possibly even aliens,’ West said. ‘The idea that this is some kind of secret warp drive or it´s defying physics as we know it, there really isn´t any good evidence for that.’
The Pentagon last year announced a task force to investigate the issue, and the Navy in recent years created a protocol for its pilots to report any possible sightings. And lawmakers in recent years have pushed for more public disclosure.
‘There´s a stigma on Capitol Hill,’ Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told ’60 Minutes’ in May.
‘I mean, some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kind of, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don´t think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.’