A recent release of documents obtained through two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by The Black Vault in 2021 and 2022, has shed light on a briefing about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (now referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena [UAP]) by the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) for NASA.

The UAPTF was a U.S. Department of Defense program established to investigate UAP reports, running from 2020 until its transition to the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) in 2021.

The requests specifically asked for “all communications, emails or otherwise, between the UAP Task Force, and NASA,” after it was revealed in NASA FOIA Case 21-HQ-F-00507 that the UAPTF had requested NASA brief them on UAPs in September 2020. That case sought all communications between the task force and NASA. A second case was filed in 2022 to specifically request a “classified slide deck on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), created by Jay Stratton, that was shown to NASA and likely other agencies in October of 2020” also revealed by previously released documents.

These newly released records, sent by the U.S. Navy to The Black Vault, include a heavily redacted slide deck which provides a glimpse into that briefing.

Previously released documents confirm that International Space Station (ISS) Program Manager, Joel Montalbano; Director of the Export Control and Interagency Liaison Division, Margaret Kieffer; Former Associate Administrator for Legislative Affairs, Suzanne Gillen; and Former Acting Associate Administrator for the Office of International and Interagency Relations, Mike Gold; all attended the briefing.

While much of the material from that briefing remains classified, several important details can be discerned from the slides that were included in the release.

One of the main points of interest is the extensive redaction throughout the slide deck, particularly in sections that discuss photographic evidence of UAPs. Photographs were included, but nearly all of them remain classified, with the exception of one image.

Another notable section discusses the use of multiple sensors in detecting UAPs. According to the slide, the UAPTF employs a combination of technologies and reporting from operators to track and analyze UAPs. This multi-sensor approach is essential for corroborating sightings and gathering reliable data, which is then shared with other U.S. government partners for further analysis.

One of the slides also focuses on the November 14, 2004, “Tic Tac” incident involving the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (CSG-11). The briefing describes the object as a “solid white, smooth” craft without any visible wings or pylons, measuring approximately 46 feet in length. Despite the event being validated by debriefs from aircrew and other personnel, the report notes that there was limited data available to conduct a thorough technical analysis at the time.

A slide titled “Potential Explanations” presents three possible explanations for UAPs, but two of these have been redacted. The only explanation visible suggests that some UAP sightings could be attributed to “unknown weather or other natural phenomena.” The redaction of the other two possibilities leaves their nature unclear.

As seen in the screenshots above, and the full document release below, the documents contain extensive redactions under two primary Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions: Exemption (b)(1) and Exemption (b)(5).

Exemption (b)(1) is used to protect classified information that pertains to national defense or foreign policy, as established by an executive order. In this case, much of the redacted content, including UAP photographs and certain technical data, likely falls under this exemption due to its potential impact on national security.

Exemption (b)(5) covers privileged interagency or intra-agency communications that are part of the government’s deliberative process. This exemption allows the withholding of documents that reflect internal discussions, recommendations, and draft policies that are not finalized. In the context of the UAP briefing, sections regarding potential explanations for UAP sightings and internal assessments have been redacted under (b)(5), likely because they involve pre-decisional analysis or sensitive deliberations between agencies.

This release, while heavily redacted, provides a rare glimpse into the collaboration between the UAP Task Force and NASA. It highlights the efforts that were made to investigate and analyze UAP sightings during the time of the task force. The redactions, particularly in areas relating to photographic evidence and potential explanations, reflect the sensitive nature of the information involved.

As more documents become available, The Black Vault will continue to publish and highlight those revelations.

###

Document Archive

Heavily Redacted UAP Briefing Between UAP Task Force and NASA Released [16 Pages, 2.3MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [2.44 MB]

The post Heavily Redacted UAP Briefing Between UAP Task Force and NASA Released first appeared on The Black Vault.

The rumors intensified after U.S. Representative Andre Carson, who had previously chaired a congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), declined to answer a question about classified briefings when asked by @AskaPol_UAPs run by journalist Matt Laslo on X.

The speculation prompted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed by The Black Vault on September 22, 2024, seeking any records—classified or unclassified—about JWST briefings provided to Congress, particularly related to the telescope’s findings. The request aimed to clarify whether any congressional briefings had been held about significant discoveries made by JWST, which has been in operation since 2021.

FOIA Request and NASA’s Response

The FOIA request specifically asked for:

“A copy of records (which includes videos/photos), electronic or otherwise, of all briefings about the James Webb Telescope and program, made for Congress. I ask that you include all CLASSIFIED and UNCLASSIFIED briefings on the James Webb telescope program, or briefings on findings made by that program.”

The request was limited to records from 2021 through the date of processing in 2024.

Earlier today, NASA responded to the FOIA request and confirmed they found “no records” related to the requested briefings. According to NASA’s FOIA response letter:

The Rumors Behind the Request

The rumors that prompted the FOIA request began circulating on social media platforms in mid-September 2024. Posts on platforms like X, YouTube, and TikTok claimed that JWST had detected a large object approximately 10 light-years away, which was allegedly moving toward Earth. These posts went as far as to speculate that the object had to be an alien spacecraft due to its supposed unnatural change in trajectory.

One of the earliest mentions of the claim came from a YouTube video posted by Psicoactivo Podcast on September 17, 2024. The video stated that members of Congress were briefed about this discovery and that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) were investigating the object. However, the video did not cite any sources to verify these claims.

As the rumors gained traction, on September 21, 2024, @AskaPol_UAPs asked Rep. Carson if he had attended classified briefings on JWST findings, to which Carson did not respond. His silence was interpreted by some as confirmation that such briefings had taken place, while others pointed out that “no comment” does not confirm anything.

NEW EXCLUSIVE:

“No comment,” Rep. Andre Carson replies when Ask a Pol inquires about any James Webb Space Telescope classified briefings https://t.co/E606LQupo5

— @AskaPol_UAPs (@AskaPol_UAPs) September 22, 2024

Snopes Addresses the Rumor

On October 2, 2024, the fact-checking website Snopes published an article examining the claims about JWST discovering alien life. After receiving numerous inquiries, Snopes looked into the rumor and found no evidence that JWST had detected such an object, nor that Congress had been briefed on the matter. The article concluded that the claim was “unfounded and likely false.”

Snopes traced the rumor’s origins back to the September 17 YouTube video but found no corroborating information from NASA, other space agencies, or congressional sources. While it remains possible that JWST has detected unusual findings that are not yet public, Snopes found no basis for the specific claims about an alien spaceship or classified briefings.

Case Closed?

NASA’s FOIA response this morning adds further weight to the conclusion that no classified briefings related to JWST’s findings have taken place. Despite widespread speculation, NASA confirmed that no records exist of any congressional briefings—classified or unclassified—on discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope.

For now, it seems that the rumors about JWST discovering alien life and related briefings remain just that: rumors. As the search for life beyond Earth continues, NASA has stated on multiple occasions that while JWST is providing groundbreaking insights into the universe, no evidence has surfaced so far indicating extraterrestrial life.

UPDATE POSTED ON APRIL 23, 2025:

On April 22, 2025, NASA granted The Black Vault’s appeal, and found records responsive to the request. Here is an update posted on X:

Rumors flew months ago about a CLASSIFIED James Webb briefing to Congress. NASA first said “no records” but I appealed & won. Now they’ve found documents!

Classified or unclassified (which I know of at least one which exists) or both? We’ll see.

Bottom line: always appeal! pic.twitter.com/aOjbmDAgy9

— John Greenewald, Jr. (@blackvaultcom) April 23, 2025

###

FOIA Response

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [597.14 KB]

The post NASA Denies Existence of Classified Briefings on James Webb Telescope Discoveries first appeared on The Black Vault.

Lockheed Martin, based in Littleton, Colorado, will be responsible for the development and construction of the GeoXO satellites. The contract is a cost-plus-award-fee agreement, indicating that Lockheed Martin will be rewarded based on performance and cost control. The project includes support for 10 years of on-orbit operations and five years of on-orbit storage, ensuring a total operational lifespan of 15 years for each spacecraft. The primary work locations will be Lockheed Martin’s facility in Littleton and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GeoXO constellation will consist of three operational satellites positioned in geostationary orbit over the east, west, and central regions. Each satellite will be equipped with three instruments designed to enhance Earth observation capabilities. The central satellite will carry an infrared sounder, an atmospheric composition instrument, and potentially a partner payload. Satellites in the east and west positions will host an imager, a lightning mapper, and an ocean color instrument. Additionally, they will support an auxiliary communication payload for NOAA’s Data Collection System relay, dissemination, and commanding.

The scope of the contract includes the tasks required to design, analyze, develop, fabricate, integrate, test, evaluate, and launch the GeoXO satellites. Lockheed Martin will also provide engineering development units, ground support equipment, simulators, and mission operations support at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.

“NASA and NOAA oversee the development, launch, testing, and operation of all the satellites in the GeoXO program,” the press release states.

While NOAA funds and manages the program, operations, and data products, NASA and its commercial partners are tasked with the development and construction of the instruments and spacecraft, as well as the launch operations.

The GeoXO program is designed to build upon and succeed the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R (GOES-R) Series Program, continuing NOAA’s mission to protect life and property across the Western Hemisphere. The advanced capabilities of the GeoXO satellite system will significantly enhance Earth observations from geostationary orbit. These observations will provide critical information to address environmental challenges related to weather, ocean, and climate operations in the United States.

“The mission will supply vital information to address major environmental challenges of the future in support of weather, ocean, and climate operations in the United States,” the release continues. By the early 2030s, when the GOES-R Series nears the end of its operational life, GeoXO’s advanced capabilities will be essential for ongoing environmental monitoring and data collection.

For more information on the GeoXO program, visit NOAA’s GeoXO program page.

###

The post Lockheed Martin to Build Advanced GeoXO Satellites for NOAA Under NASA Contract first appeared on The Black Vault.

TESS, which observes large sections of the sky for about a month at a time, tracks the brightness of tens of thousands of stars, aiming to capture transits—brief, regular dimmings caused by orbiting planets. This mission’s primary goal is to identify these transits and learn more about the exoplanets that cause them.

“We’ve found the nearest, transiting, temperate, Earth-size world located to date,” said Masayuki Kuzuhara, a project assistant professor at the Astrobiology Center in Tokyo. Kuzuhara co-led the research team with Akihiko Fukui, a project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. Although the planet’s atmosphere is still unknown, the team is considering it as an “exo-Venus,” due to its similar size and energy reception from its star.

The host star, Gliese 12, is a cool red dwarf in the constellation Pisces. It is about 27% the size of our Sun and has roughly 60% of the Sun’s surface temperature. Gliese 12 b orbits this star every 12.8 days and is comparable to Earth or slightly smaller, with an estimated surface temperature of around 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius), assuming it has no atmosphere.

Red dwarf stars like Gliese 12 are ideal for finding Earth-size planets because their smaller size and mass make the detection of planetary transits and reflex motions easier. The lower luminosity of these stars also means that their habitable zones are closer, facilitating the discovery of potentially habitable planets.

The distance between Gliese 12 and its new planet is just 7% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. The planet receives 1.6 times more energy from its star than Earth does from the Sun and about 85% of what Venus experiences. Shishir Dholakia, a doctoral student at the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, highlighted the significance of this discovery, stating, “Gliese 12 b represents one of the best targets to study whether Earth-size planets orbiting cool stars can retain their atmospheres, a crucial step to advance our understanding of habitability on planets across our galaxy.”

Studying Gliese 12 b could also provide insights into our solar system’s evolution. Larissa Palethorpe, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and University College London, explained, “It is thought that Earth’s and Venus’s first atmospheres were stripped away and then replenished by volcanic outgassing and bombardments from residual material in the solar system. Because Gliese 12 b is between Earth and Venus in temperature, its atmosphere could teach us a lot about the habitability pathways planets take as they develop.”

One key factor in retaining an atmosphere is the star’s activity level. Red dwarfs are often magnetically active, producing powerful X-ray flares. However, analyses by both research teams indicate that Gliese 12 shows no signs of extreme behavior, making it an even more intriguing target for study.

The findings by Kuzuhara and Fukui’s team were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, while Dholakia and Palethorpe’s research appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. These studies highlight the potential of using transmission spectroscopy to analyze the atmospheres of temperate planets like Gliese 12 b. Michael McElwain, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, emphasized, “To better understand the diversity of atmospheres and evolutionary outcomes for these planets, we need more examples like Gliese 12 b.”

TESS, a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission, is managed by NASA Goddard and operated by MIT. The mission involves multiple partners, including Northrop Grumman, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, along with more than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide.

The discovery of Gliese 12 b opens new avenues for understanding the potential for habitability on planets beyond our solar system, marking another significant achievement for NASA’s TESS mission.

The post Gliese 12 b: A New Temperate Exoplanet Found Just 40 Light-Years Away first appeared on The Black Vault.

Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Global temperatures last year were around 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported.

“NASA and NOAA’s global temperature report confirms what billions of people around the world experienced last year; we are facing a climate crisis,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “From extreme heat, to wildfires, to rising sea levels, we can see our Earth is changing. There’s still more work to be done, but President Biden and communities across America are taking more action than ever to reduce climate risks and help communities become more resilient – and NASA will continue to use our vantage point of space to bring critical climate data back down to Earth that is understandable and accessible for all people. NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration are working to protect our home planet and its people, for this generation – and the next.”

In 2023, hundreds of millions of people around the world experienced extreme heat, and each month from June through December set a global record for the respective month. July was the hottest month ever recorded. Overall, Earth was about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.4 degrees Celsius) warmer in 2023 than the late 19th-century average, when modern record-keeping began.

“The exceptional warming that we’re experiencing is not something we’ve seen before in human history,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS. “It’s driven primarily by our fossil fuel emissions, and we’re seeing the impacts in heat waves, intense rainfall, and coastal flooding.”

Though scientists have conclusive evidence that the planet’s long-term warming trend is driven by human activity, they still examine other phenomena that can affect yearly or multi-year changes in climate such as El Niño, aerosols and pollution, and volcanic eruptions.

Typically, the largest source of year-to-year variability is the El Niño – Southern Oscillation ocean climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean. The pattern has two phases – El Niño and La Niña – when sea surface temperatures along the equator switch between warmer, average, and cooler temperatures. From 2020-2022, the Pacific Ocean saw three consecutive La Niña events, which tend to cool global temperatures. In May 2023, the ocean transitioned from La Niña to El Niño, which often coincides with the hottest years on record.

However, the record temperatures in the second half of 2023 occurred before the peak of the current El Niño event. Scientists expect to see the biggest impacts of El Niño in February, March, and April.

The post NASA Analysis Confirms 2023 as Warmest Year on Record first appeared on The Black Vault.

NASA Executive Council (EC)

Meeting Minutes and Agenda for 2017-2018 (Note: Files below are how they were received from NASA. They are sorted alphabetically, and may not be chronological.)

r_01d_-_ec-2017-05-003_mission_support_future_architecture_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.1M
r_06-26_06-27_smc_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign_in_sheet_1_Redacted.pdf	2.5M
r_07-09_ec_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign-in_sheet_Redacted.pdf	1.6M
r_07-30_ec_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign_in_sheet_0_Redacted.pdf	1.6M
r_09-06_smc_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign-in_sheet_Redacted.pdf	2.0M
r_09-28_smc_meeting_minutes_Redacted.pdf	1.7M
r_10-16_ec_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.4M
r_10-16_ec_meeting_minutes_0_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_EC-2017-06-001 2018 Agency Reform Plan Response to OMB_Redacted.pdf	1.7M
r_EC-2017-06-002 Interim 2018 Strategic Plan Approval_Redacted.pdf	1.2M
r_EC-2017-07-002 PPBE19 Overguide Guidance Decision Memo_Redacted.pdf	970K
r_EC-2017-08-004_Redacted.pdf	698K
r_EC-2017-12-001_Redacted.pdf	740K
r_EC 2017-04-003 Legislative Proposals Final Signed_Redacted.pdf	718K
r_ec-2018-07-001_agency_communications_strategy_1_Redacted.pdf	791K
r_ec-2018-08-002_approval_to_submit_the_nasa_ffrdc_study_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_ec_2017-04-001_preliminary_approval_of_the_initial_draft_of_the_2018_strategic_plan_final_signed_4_Redacted.pdf	870K
r_ec_2018-01-09_stem_engagement_council_sec_alignment_decision_memo.pdf	2.2M
r_ec_minutes_18_december_2018_1.pdf	1.9M
r_offline_-_08-24_ec_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign_in_sheet_Redacted.pdf	1.5M
r_offline_-_ec-2018-08-001_ppbe20_budget-_omb_messaging_and_approval_to_submit_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	727K
r_smc-2018-06-13_meeting_minutes_and_actions_Redacted.pdf	1.6M

NASA Program Management Council (APMC)

Meeting Minutes and Agenda for 2017-2018 (Note: Files below are how they were received from NASA. They are sorted alphabetically, and may not be chronological.)

black-type MSC 2017-2018.pdf	753K
r_08-30_ohcm_map_project_kdp-c_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.4M
r_08-30_olia_map_project_kdp-c_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.2M
r_bsa_protective_services_deep_dive_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.6M
r_msc-2012-01-001_re-purpose_grc_bldg_3411_Redacted.pdf	773K
r_msc-2016-09-001_jpl_building_600_data_center_relocation_decision__Redacted.pdf	680K
r_msc-2017-03-002_bsa_facilities_implementation_plan_Redacted.pdf	740K
r_msc-2017-04-005_bsa_ocfo_implementation_plan_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	729K
r_msc-2017-06-001_approval_of_fy19_construction_projects_signed_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	726K
r_msc-2017-06-002_reduce_the_footprint_-_strategic_rightsizing_goal_signed_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	768K
r_msc-2017-06-005_domestic_and_foreign_travel_consolidation_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	713K
r_msc-2017-09-001_-_2017_nasa_statement_of_assurance_decision_memo_signed_Redacted.pdf	789K
r_msc-2017-10-001_bsa-education_and_outreach_plan_for_public_and_stem_engagement_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.1M
r_msc-2017-10-002_agency_shared_services_strategy_ii_decision_memo_signed_Redacted.pdf	741K
r_msc-2017-10-003_mission_support_future_architecture_program_Redacted.pdf	778K
r_msc-2017-10-005_jsc_master_plan_decision_memo_signed_Redacted.pdf	756K
r_msc-2017-11-001_ocfo_kdp-a_review_signed_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	726K
r_msc-2017-11-002_mission_support_future_architecture_program_map_-_ohcm_kdp-b_review_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	741K
r_msc-2017-11-003_mission_support_future_architecture_program_map_-_olia_kdp-a_review_signed_decision_memo.pdf	817K
r_msc-2018-01-001_arc_jet_budget_recommendation_signed_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	777K
r_msc-2018-02-01_external_radiation_block_buy_signed_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	751K
r_msc-2018-03-01_bsa_technical_authority_deep_dive_1_Redacted.pdf	1.8M
r_msc-2018-08-02_gsfc_master_plan_concept_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_msc-2018-09-001_fy_2018_nasa_statement_of_assurance_decision_memo_1_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_msc-2018-09-002_technical_authority_bsa_implementation_plan_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_msc-2018-10-002_logistics_bsa_deep_dive_decision_memo_1_Redacted.pdf	1.6M
r_msc-2018-11-001_op_osbp_map_kdp-a_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_msc-2018-12-001_nasa_conference_tracking_requirement_s-_decision_memo_-_signed-_9_Redacted.pdf	1.3M
r_msc 2017-01-001_bsa_education_and_outreach_deep_dive_decisional_memo_Redacted.pdf	1.6M
r_msc_30_2019_odeo_map_project_to_kdp-a_4_Redacted.pdf	709K

NASA Mission Support Council (MSC)

Meeting Minutes and Agenda for 2017-2018 (Note: Files below are how they were received from NASA. They are sorted alphabetically, and may not be chronological.)

r_06-13_apmc_meeting_summary_-_agenda_-_sign-in_sheet_0_Redacted.pdf	2.2M
r_08-16_apmc_meeting_summary_-_apmc_-_sign-in_sheet_Redacted.pdf	1.9M
r_09-25-26_apmc_decision_memo_-_agendas_-_sign-in_sheets_Redacted.pdf	3.9M
r_6-20 APMC JWST Replan Decision Memo_Redacted.pdf	724K
r_2017_02_15_apmc_summary_agenda_sign_in_sheet_4 (RIF)_Redacted.pdf	2.0M
r_SBU – 06-20 APMC Meeting Summary – Agenda – Sign-In Sheet_Redacted.pdf	1.9M
r_SBU – 2018 03 28 APMC Summary Agenda Sign-In Sheet_Redacted.pdf	1.8M
r_SBU – APMC Final Summary 18 October 2017_Redacted.pdf	2.7M
r_apmc-2018-10-10_meeting_decisions_agenda_and_sign-in_sheet_1_Redacted.pdf	3.0M
r_apmc-2018-11-06_meeting_minutes_actions_agenda_and_sign-in_sheet_0_Redacted.pdf	2.8M
r_apmc_06_december_2018_meeting_minutes_and_actions_Redacted.pdf	3.7M
r_apmc_06_nov_2018_pmiaa_implementation_plan_Redacted.pdf	460K
r_apmc_6_dec_2018_corrective_action_plan_Redacted.pdf	788K
r_apmc_10_oct_2018_ampl_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	466K
r_apmc_10_oct_2018_esm_decsion_memo_0_Redacted.pdf	612K
r_apmc_10_oct_2018_essp_decision_memo_3_Redacted.pdf	614K
r_apmc_10_oct_2018_ia_decision_memo_Redacted.pdf	478K
r_apmc_capability_days_march_2017_1_Redacted.pdf	3.9M
r_apmc_capability_days_september_2017_Redacted.pdf	2.9M
r_apmc_december_11_2018_meeting_minutes_and_actions_0_Redacted.pdf	579K
r_apmc_final_summary_06_december_2017_1_Redacted.pdf	4.6M
r_apmc_final_summary_11_october_2017_Redacted.pdf	5.2M
r_apmc_final_summary_17_may_2017_Redacted.pdf	2.1M
r_apmc_final_summary_19_april_2017_Redacted.pdf	1.8M
r_apmc_final_summary_19_july_2017_Redacted.pdf	4.9M
r_apmc_march_2018_capability_days_decision_memorandum_0_Redacted.pdf	2.4M
r_apmc_meeting_summary_22_may_2018_0_Redacted.pdf	6.8M

The post NASA’s Leadership Structure Meeting Minutes first appeared on The Black Vault.

(It was followed by a media teleconference, which is archived here, with a transcript, as well.)

The transcript was created by The Black Vault with the help/assistance of AI. Then, manually, the names were matched up with the speakers, and a rough pass over the transcript was done, but it is far from perfect. However, the intent is to have some kind of a guide to the meeting that can be searched. For any corrections, feel free to CONTACT with changes.

Transcript

Dan Evans  00:13

Hello, good morning and welcome. My name is Dan Evans and is the designated federal official for NASA’s unidentified anomalous phenomena independent study team. I’d like to call this meeting to order and introduce the panelists. In the back row we have Nadia Drake, Paula Bontempi, Federica Bianco, David Grinspoon, Karlin Toner, Josh Semeter and Jennifer Buss. When in the front row, we have Walter Scott Warren Randolph, Reggie Brothers, Shelly Wright. Scott Kelly, Anamaria Berea, Mike Gold, and David Spergel, who serves as chair of the team. I have a few opening remarks. But to begin, I’d like to start with the following. First, I’d like to pay tribute to the life of retired Air Force Master Sergeant Sam Satow, who’s been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery today. Following his active duty service, Sam served as the intelligence collection manager for the National Intelligence manager for aviation, where he played a critical role in UAP analysis. All of us at NASA offer our condolences to Sam’s family, friends and colleagues. Second, I’d like to take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to our distinguished panel of experts for their unwavering commitment and dedication. it’s disheartening to note that several of them have been subjected to online abuse due to their decision to participate on this panel. And NASA security team is actively addressing this issue. We at NASA, acutely aware of the considerable public interest in UAP. However, it’s critical to understand any form of harassment towards our panelists only serves to detract from the scientific process, which requires an environment of respect and openness. Now, every member of our team is a recognized authority in their respective field, and they have our unequivocal support. NASA stands in solidarity with them, advocating for a respectful discourse that fits their expertise, and the significance of their work. Thanks. Now, in recent years, the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena nowadays turned on identifying anomalous phenomena, or UAPs has captured the attention of the public, the scientific community and the government alike. And it’s now our collective responsibility to investigate these occurrences with the rigorous scientific scrutiny that they deserve. NASA Administrator, Senator Bill Nelson believes that understanding UAPs is vital for several reasons, which is why he directed this study. First and foremost, it provides an opportunity for us to expand our understanding of the world around us, is an organization dedicated to exploring the unknown, this work is in our DNA. Secondly, this study aims to enhance situational awareness. The presence of UAPs raises concerns about the safety of our skies. And it’s this nation’s obligation to determine whether these phenomena pose any potential risks to airspace safety. By understanding the nature of UAPs, we can ensure that our skies remain a safe space for all. In order to achieve these goals, it is crucial that we employ a scientific lens for our UAP work. It’s precisely this rigorous, evidence based approach that allows one to separate fact from fiction. This team is comprised of experts from various disciplines, which allows them to approach this work from multiple perspective. And we have greatly benefited from that collective expertise. Now, why do we value a scientific approach? It’s because science is built on evidence. It thrives on scrutiny, it demands reproduce, reproduce, reproduce reproducibility report that you feel I can sorry, and above all, objectivity when we approach UAPs. From a scientific perspective, we do not come in with an agenda, we come in needing a roadmap. Indeed, the primary objective of this incredible team of experts is not to go back and look at grainy footage of UAPs but rather to give us a roadmap to guide us for future analysis. This is the very scientific method that NASA holds true to its heart. Scientific research is intended to be publicly available and transparent. And NASA prides itself on making its data and images available to the public to learn and explore on their own. By holding public meetings like this one, we aim for open and honest dialogue with the public We recognize that public interest in UAPs is high, and that the demand for answers is strong. conversations like this one, are the first step to reducing the stigma surrounding UAP reporting. Moreover, transparency is essential for fostering trust between NASA, the public, and the scientific community. In order to do things right, we must work together, pooling our resources, our knowledge, and our expertise. And by maintaining open channels of communication, we can facilitate collaboration, encourage the exchange of ideas, and ensure that our work is as robust as possible. Not only that, but our commitment to openness is in itself. A reflection of NASA’s commitment to scientific integrity is an organization dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. It is NASA’s responsibility to be honest and forthright and to follow the science. And by being transparent in our work, we uphold our dedication to scientific excellence. The meeting today represents the first deliberative actions that the team has taken. And so it’s important to keep in mind that these still have several months of work ahead of them. Their final report will be released this summer, and we will publish it on our website. NASA believes that the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena represents an exciting step forward in our quest to uncover the mysteries of the world around us. By embracing a scientific lens, we ensure that our work is rigorous and reliable. And by valuing transparency and openness, we can foster trust and collaboration with the public. Simply put, this is why we do what we do. Now, before I introduce Nicky, there are a few administrative matters to attend to. Firstly, the identified anomalous phenomena independent study team that’s been established in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act known as facut. Its parent committee is the Earth Science Advisory Committees. As such, this group does not report to the government. It reports to the Science Advisory Committee will debate the recommendations on formally transmit this team’s report to the government. Next, our deliberative committee meetings such as this one are open to the public. And also after this panel was convened the National Defense Authorization Act, known as the NDAA change the A in UAP to be anomalous. Accordingly, this pals remit was expanded to encompass not just aerial UAP however, the majority of ERP sightings to date have been in the aerial domain. So it’s fair to say that this panel’s focus is on the aerial aspects of anomalous. Now in compliance with a fact of fact a federal statute former minutes have been taken throughout the meeting today. And these meetings and these minutes are for the public record, and hence, all presentations and discussions and comments by the committee members should be considered to be on the record. Each member of this UAP study team has been appointed because of their specific subject matter expertise as individuals, and hence each member is subject to federal ethics laws. This category of appointment is called special government employees or SGS. For our non government members, and our two federal employees serve as regular government employees known as IGS. To the panel, all members on this committee should remember to recuse themselves if a topic comes up in which you have a potential conflict of interest between your financial interests, including those of your employer, and matters that we’re discussing. And then finally, panel. If you have any ethics questions, please see me separately and if needed, I’ll put you in contact with a NASA ethics attorney. Thanks for bearing with me. I’d now like to turn to the amazing Dr. Nikki Fox, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Over to you, Nicky.

Nicola “Nicky” Fox  08:59

Thank you, Dan. And thank you to all the members of NASA’s UAP independent study team. Your selfless dedication to the pursuit of knowledge is just so commendable. And I want to thank you, the audience for tuning in today to watch our first deliberative meeting of NASA’s independent study team on evaluating and categorizing on identified anomalous phenomena. Before I begin, though, I really do want to double down on Dan’s words, that it is really disheartening to hear of the harassment that our panelists have faced online, all because they’re studying this topic. NASA stands behind our panelists and we do not tolerate abuse. Harassment only leads to further stigmatization of the UAP field, significantly hindering the scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter. Your harassment also obstructs the public’s right to knowledge. Our panelists are leading experts in the science terrific aeronautics and data analytics communities. We are very lucky to have them on board to share their invaluable insights to inform NASA on what possible data could be collected in the future, and how it can be collected. To help us better understand the nature of UAP. The UAP independent study was commissioned to create a roadmap on how to use the tools of science to evaluate and categorize the nature of UAPs going forward. This roadmap of course, will help the federal government obtain usable data to explain the nature of future UAPs. transparency, openness and scientific integrity are Pinnacle to NASA’s mission. They’re at the forefront of this public meeting, and have been throughout the team seven months on this study. As Dan noted, this is a working meeting and so the public will have the incredible opportunity to witness the process of science in action. At NASA, we lead the world in exploration and are committed to rigorous scientific inquiry. The nature of science is to better understand the unknown. And to do that our scientists need data. Right now there is very limited number of high quality observations and data curation of UAP. The existing data available from eyewitness reports are often muddled and cannot provide conclusive evidence that supports UAP recognition and analysis. Additionally, an object’s background can complicate the data further and render it unusable due to conventional objects that can mimic or overshadow the phenomena completely, such as commercial aircraft, military equipment, the weather, and ionospheric phenomena like auroras. This lack of high quality data make it impossible to draw scientific conclusions on the nature of UAP. Now, this team has used unclassified data from civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources to inform their recommendations. And as Dan noted, they will be published in a public report that comes out this summer. I want to emphasize that there is really great benefit to studying unclassified data rather than classified data for this study. First, I’m identified anomalous phenomena sightings themselves are not classified. It’s often the sensor platform that is classified and you can kind of think of it, if a fighter jet took a picture of the Statue of Liberty, then that image would be classified not because of the subject in the picture, but because of the sensors on the plane. Second, unclassified data that make it possible for our team to communicate openly, to advance our understanding of UAP not only with each other, but across the scientific community and to the public. This ensures a clear and transparent pipeline of information that can be built upon through the general through generations to expand our understanding. This study relies on open data, everything we use at NASA is open, and anyone can look at these records. So I invite you to visit our Open Data portal@data.nasa.gov, to comb through our 10s of 1000s of datasets that are free and fully accessible to the public. Additionally, please check out data.gov/open/data for a great overview of where you can find the archives for our science and mission data sites. I am very, very much looking forward to hearing the deliberations put forth today from our distinguished panel of experts. Thank you so much for being here.

David Spergel  13:45

Before you go, just want to open up to questions. Let me start with a question on this up on the NASA data. I think one of the important things that we’ll be looking at with other datasets and events as the data is not very well calibrated. Can you say just a little bit about how NASA goes through calibrating some of its earth science data?

Nicola “Nicky” Fox  14:06

Oh yes, we very very rigorous Earth’s I mean, all of our datasets not just Earth Science go through extremely rigorous calibration. We don’t release anything until it’s really perfect. I mean, we have quick look data that is marked as quick look data. So you know you can use it to get preliminary findings but wait for the the really nicely cleaned up data. So a lot of rigorous protocol in putting out our data to make sure it is perfect.

David Spergel  14:38

Do we have any other questions from the panel?

Nicola “Nicky” Fox  14:43

All right, thank you so much.

David Spergel  14:59

Hi I’m David Spergel. I’m the chair of the panel. And when I look at our chart, we have a lengthy charge. But the high level summary of it is how can NASA contribute to understanding the nature of UAPs. And our role here is not to resolve the nature of these events, but rather to give NASA guidance to provide a roadmap of how it can contribute to this in this area. After my opening remarks, we’ll hear from Sean Kirkpatrick from the A R O. And it’s the ARL that’s charged with leaving the whole of government UAP effort. And they’ve already issued some preliminary reports on some of the events. NASA’s role is to use its unique capabilities. And its role as a civilian agency, interacting with the scientific community in an open and transparent manner. And, you know, as Dr. Fox emphasize the Defense Intelligence Agency data on UAP are often classified primarily because of how the data is collected, not because what’s in the data. For camera on an F 35 took a picture of a bird. It’s classified. If a spy satellite takes an image of a balloon. And we’ve had in the news, some balloons recently, that date is classified. And that’s because of a desire to not reveal our technical capabilities to other nations. NASA, on the other hand, operates in a mode where it’s collecting data in the open. And the NASA data is available on websites and is well characterized. And because of NASA being the civilian agency studying air and space, it has a special role to play. And I see our charge primarily as helping identify for NASA ways it could play that role, and contribute to understanding. We’ve gone through a preliminary data collection stage. And to summarize some of the things that we’ve learned. The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection. And if I think about the data that people have out there, it’s in many ways what we’d like to think of as citizen science. But again, it is uncalibrated data, poorly characterized, not well curated. And we face looking through this data, a significant background. A background of many of these events are commercial aircraft, civilian American military, drones, weather and research balloons, military equipment, ionospheric phenomenon, we need to characterize how, what the date when the date is taken, when it sees events like this first. The current existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event. They’re often and uninformative due to lack of quality control, and data curation. To understand UAP, better, targeted data collection, thorough data curation, and robust analyses are needed. Such an approach will help to discern unexplained UAP sightings. But even then there’s no guarantee that all sightings will be explained. Another challenge in this area is what we call stigma, there’s a real stigma among people reporting events. And despite NASA’s extensive efforts to reduce the stigma, the origin of the UAP is remain unclear. And we feel many events remain unreported. commercial pilots, for example, are very reluctant to report anomalies. And one of our goals and having NASA play a role is to remove stigma, and get high quality data. In fact, if I were to summarize, in one line, what I feel we’ve learned, it’s we need high quality data. And this is not some as a research scientist whose work has been primarily focused in cosmology. I would say the lesson of my career has been you want to address important questions. You need high quality data with well calibrated instruments. So the let me now introduce the agenda. We’re going to hear from a number of experts who will be presenting out to lunch. We’ll then break at 12, for lunch from 12 to 1230. At 1230, we’ll resume. And we’ll have presentations by members of the panel on some preliminary ideas for discussion. And that will be a period of time for some open discussion by the panel. We will then have a q&a session based on questions that have been sent in, in advance to the website. And we’ve curated those questions and group them together. And we’ll be going through a lot of those questions. And then we’ll summarize. And then over the subsequent couple months, we’ll work on putting together the report. And as Dan said, we’re aiming to make a public report available, we hope by the end of July. So now let me turn this over to Sean Kirkpatrick

Dan Evans  20:55

will do a couple of q&a. q&a for me. Okay, from the panel.

David Spergel  20:59

Any any questions on how thoughts? Yes, would get the mic?

Paula Bontempi  21:12

Yeah, so one of the things I think Dr. Fox said was looking at the release of data very important for our study, when it’s high quality. And you have also commented that data are not always perfect, when we’re doing certain studies, I wonder if you could shed some light on the, you know, the difference between the application of certain data to certain scientific challenges.

David Spergel  21:44

So, you know, when you look at your camera, your cameras often designed to take an image in the daytime, and might not be optimized for nighttime imaging. Or if you take something that astronomers are very familiar with, is we design our telescopes to work at night. And if the sun is not even if you’re, you know, you would never take the Hubble telescope and pointed at the sun, this would destroy its detectors. Not only that, if the telescope is pointing there, and the sun is over there, even though you’re not looking at the sun, reflections off of the optics will produce what we call ghosting. And that kind of ghosting gets, produces some very strange images. And this, you know, one of the many things we need to worry about when we see unusual things taken from a camera is, even if you’re pointing the camera, there was the sun over there. Those kinds of anomalies degrade the quality of the data. And that’s why it’s very important to work with well characterized instruments, and to be, you know, using them in ways in which you, you understand what, what’s going on. So I think if you look at, you know, data taken from the James Webb Telescope, or from the Hubble or these things, and these are, you know, telescopes looking out in space, you’ll see some really, you know, at first funny phenomenon, when a telescope points at a star that’s bright, it saturates the detector, and puts bleeding down the detector. And you’ll see phenomenon like, if there’s a bright star, off to the side of the dark that many wonder looking at, you get this effects where light bounces off of dust in your telescope, and produces a sort of diffuse image that has some really strange properties. So you know, when you see something unusual, the first thing you have to do is understand how that data was taken. And I think this is one of the challenges when faces when you have data taken by uncalibrated instruments years ago, it’s very hard to know what’s taken. It’s very hard to draw conclusions. I think that’s one of the challenges with archival data. And I think having dedicated well calibrated instruments, I think will be important here as in any other area to understand what’s going on.

Mike Gold  24:39

So, David, anomalies are so often the engine of discovery, maybe you can say a quick word about high risk, high reward research in your field of cosmology and how you see that impacting the UAP study as well.

David Spergel  24:53

So an area that comes to mind is on fast radio bursts. And shore prize was just announced yesterday was awarded to the discovery of Fast radio bursts. And these are these bursting signals that go off all over in space. And it’s an interesting story, because some of the bursts were real, and are fascinating. And some of the bursts, there was a series of bursts observed by this observatory in Australia. And they had really strange structure. And people couldn’t figure out what was going on. And then they start to notice a lot of them bunched together around lunchtime. And what had happened was, the people at the observatory would heat up their lunch in the microwave, and something they would do is they would open the door of the microwave oven before the microwave stopped. This is bad for your microwave oven. It wears it out. But not only that, it produces a burst of radio signal that was picked up by these sensitive detectors. So this, I think it’s an interesting lesson. Some events end up being something unusual and conventional. But some events with these FRPs turn out to be these powerful explosions, which are taking place at cosmological distances. They’re nature’s still not fully understood. I think they’re one of the really most fascinating objects, we have these bursts going out all over space. They’re interesting probes, because they’re kind of waiting up space between here and there. And they’re a subject of a reactive research. And if one looks at the history of these FRBs, at first, they were discovered, not believed and can finally confirmed, and they were discovered by instruments that were very sensitive, but not optimized for this. And now what we’re doing is we’re optimizing instruments and optimizing software to look for these events. And it’s often these surprises that turn out to be most interesting. And you know, there are phenomenon, like sprites, which you can think of as upward going lightning, which were seen by commercial pilots, and somewhat not believed, right, but they were very strange. And, and it was really only when we were able to take very high speed imaging data, data taken often from places like Space Station, that were able to see that and learn about these fascinating ionospheric phenomenon. So it’s surprises are really interesting. I mean, I think this is one of the fascinating things about the UAP phenomenon, if it’s something that’s anomalous, that makes it interesting and worthy of study. Other questions? Great. So now, let me turn it over to Sean.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  28:30

Thank you, David. And it’s a pleasure to be back. Good morning, everyone. I want to start by thanking NASA for convening today’s UAP independent study public meeting, and inviting me to continue to participate. NASA has been an invaluable partner to our team at AARO as we work to better understand and respond to unidentified anomalous phenomena. We applaud NASA for commissioning its independent study team and for exploring what data and tools could be leveraged to shed greater light on UAP. Though NASA and AARO are taking on very different aspects of the UAP problem set, our efforts are very much complementary. We both are committed to the scientific method to a data driven approach, and the highest standards of scientific research integrity. While NASA is evaluating unclassified data sources for its study, AARO’s dataset includes classified material, with a focus on national security areas. However, all of this data collectively, is critical to understanding the nature and origin of UAP. NASA brings unique capabilities, world class scientists, and a wealth of academic and research linkages. NASA also has access to Earth sensing satellites, radiological sensors, tools for gravitational wave geomagnetic wave detection and means for analyzing open source clutter and crowd sourced data that may assist both AARO  and NASA in their UAP efforts. We are very grateful for the partnership and welcome the opportunity to join with NASA to share our collective findings with the public, as the US government moves towards greater transparency on this issue. Last month, I testified before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on emerging threats and capabilities, and shared some of the progress made since AARO’s establishment in July 2022. I discussed AARO’s scientific and analytical approaches. its efforts to improve UAP data collection, standardize our reporting processes, leverage our partnerships and meticulously review the US government’s UAP related historical records. As I told the subcommittee, then, the resolution of all UAP cases cannot be accomplished by DOD and the intelligence community alone. eras ultimate success will require partnerships with the interagency industry, academia, the scientific community, and the public, which all bring their own resources, ideas and expertise to the UAP challenge. We believe robust collaboration, and peer review, across a broad range of partners will promote greater objectivity and transparency in the study of UAP. Of course, NASA’s UAP independent study team was convened very much in that spirit. I also emphasize to Congress that the only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous. The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO and in our holdings demonstrate mundane characteristics of readily explainable sources. While a large number of cases and AARO’s holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with those cases, very much along the lines of what David was just speaking about. Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution. Meanwhile, for the few objects that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO is approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytical rigor. This includes physical testing and employing modeling and simulation to validate our analyses and the underlying theories, and then peer reviewing those results before reaching any conclusions. AARO has shared these cases with the appropriately cleared and asset team members in order to discuss and help recommend potential scientific areas of study that NASA may want to take lead on. I’ll underscore here as I did before Congress that AARO’s work will take time, if we are committed to doing it right. AARO is committed to the highest standards of scientific research integrity. As we know, our partners at NASA are as well. Thanks again to NASA for hosting this public forum for UAP discussion and information exchange. And I’d like to turn to a brief presentation that includes some recently declassified footage and trends for discussion. Next slide, please. So some of you probably saw a version of this at the open hearing last month. This is an overall review of all the analytic trends of all the cases that we have to date. While the numbers may have changed a little bit. The overall trends remain the same. Most of what we are seeing reported by aircraft are at the altitudes where we fly aircraft, that should not be a surprise. You will note however, that I have no space reports and I have no maritime reports. That is notable even though we are looking across all of those domains. On the upper right, we have UAP morphologies, the vast majority of what has been reported and what we have data on little less than half now our orbs round spheres. And in the bottom right, you will see in the really the heat map of the areas where we get most of our reporting. This is very much a collection biased map. This is where our sensors are our military and our IC and some of the FAA data in the middle with is what we call our typical UAP characteristics for the vast majority of the cases that we see. One way of looking at that is a they will call it a target package. This is the thing we are out hunting for in most cases. Next slide please. This was an example of one that I showed at the hearing recently. This is a spherical or metallic in the Middle East 2022 by an MQ nine, I will come back to the sensor question that David raised here in a moment. This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of we see these all over the world. And we see these in and making very interesting apparent maneuvers. This one in particular, however, I would point out, demonstrated knowing enigmatic technical capabilities, and was no threat to airborne safety. While we are still looking at it, I don’t have any more data other than that. And so being able to come to some conclusion is going to take time, until we can get better resolved data on similar objects that we can then do a larger analysis on. Next slide, please. I’m gonna let this play through. This is a newly released video, you’ll notice there are two dots moving back and forth, there is a plane at the bottom that’s moving across the screen. And now there are three dots moving back and forth. The moving back and forth, is from the sensor and the platform that’s collecting it. This is a a p3 on a training mission in the western United States. They picked these up and they tried to intercept and was unable to intercept them. Apart from that motion, and you’ll see a little bit of defocusing from the sensor itself. There is no other oddity about this, except for the fact that they couldn’t catch them. The reason they couldn’t catch them is because after further analysis, it was shown that those objects were actually much farther away from the p3 than they thought. And in fact, when we went even deeper looked at air traffic control data, we were able to match those two aircraft on a major flight corridor heading into a major airport for landing. This is the kind of thing that can spoof and or provide misperception of both very highly trained pilots, as well as sensors. Right, and this was reported as an odd grouping of three UAP. That is not to say that the pilots didn’t know what they were looking at, or they, they knew what they were looking at, but they weren’t really sure. But it also is meant to say that when they’re not sure they’re reporting it now. And that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. And then we have to go look at it. Next slide, please. That brings us to really what is AARO doing in the science and technical realm. So this is one of those areas that I want to expound a little bit more on than we did in the last hearings. AARO has a robust scientific plan that we are required to then provide to Congress here pretty soon.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  38:16

One of the first things that we’re doing is looking across all the existing sensor data against that typical UAP target that I gave you up at the very first slide that goes beyond DOD and icy sensors that’s commercial, that’s civil, that’s and with partnership with NASA, when NASA centers, and NOAA sensors, understanding if any of these Earth sensing satellites, any of these airborne platforms, any of these ground radars, whether it’s FAA or other can actually see these things. Given what we’ve got so far is going to be an important first step to understanding what sensors are going to be relevant. From there, we will we are augmenting with dedicated sensors that we’ve purpose built, designed to detect, track and characterize those particular objects. And we will be been putting those out in very select areas for surveillance purposes. Partnerships with academia exploring the signatures to match to our data. So understanding if a thing is moving and if it is doing certain anomalous activities, what are the signatures we would expect to see? How do we pull on that? And then from there, how do I tune my collection architecture to go after statistical analytic techniques? We’re working with a couple of universities on how do I do broader base statistical analysis on unclassified and classified data so that I can apply those analytics to our holdings and then AI and ML analytic techniques for searching out through the data. What are this what are the objects were the targets that we’re going after? We have partnerships with both DOD and Doa labs to explore our current state of the art fundamental physics of UAP observations, both current and historical. In other words, if I have objects, those few that are doing some things that are anomalous, what is our current understanding of maneuverability? Speed? Signature management, propulsion? What are those underlying signatures that we would expect to see? And how do I then pull on that? Our interagency and allied partnership shifts for calibration of our capabilities. This is exactly what David was pointing out. The vast majority of what we have reported to us are DoD sensors. DOD sensors are not scientific sensors. They are not intelligence community sensors. Believe it or not, intelligence community sensors are very close to scientific sensors, they are calibrated, they are high precision, they are everything you’d ever want to know about a thing. DOD sensors have one purpose they are to identify an object that is known and put a weapon on it. That is what they’re for. Right, predominantly. So understanding how do you calibrate those against these known objects? How do I fly an F 35, against a weather balloon at different speeds in different altitudes and different sun conditions and different lighting conditions and heating conditions. Those are all important measurements that need to be done. And we are on the in process of doing that right now. That table on the right is a very simplified version of our entire test matrix, which you would not be able to fit on three of these slides against all of our sensors across all of those phenomenologies. That will be useful in order to then train our operators, pilots and sensors against the known objects. And then finally, our pattern of life analysis. This is essentially baselining. What is normal, I have all these hotspot areas, but we only have hotspot areas, because that’s when the reports come in from the operators that are operating at that time. They don’t operate all the time. So to have a 24/7 collection monitoring campaign, in some of these areas for three months at a time is going to be necessary in order to measure out what is normal, then I’ll know what is not normal, right when we have additional things that come through those spaces. And that includes space and maritime. Next slide, please. Which brings me to some of my recommendations for the panel. And their consideration and deliberation. of some of these we’re going to be exploring with our new NASA embed. I’m happy to be welcoming on for your pretty soon who’s going to help us in our scientific plan. Crowd crowdsourcing unclassified open source data, this is where you know some of the public can be helpful. You know, imagery from a iPhone is generally not helpful unless you are right up on whatever it is you’re looking at. However, some of the ancillary data that your iPhone provides from location to speed to other phenomenologies and more than one of those can be very helpful. Large scale ground based scientific instrumentation evaluating how can I use some of these other instruments for detection? The FRB example was was perfect, right. You have a bunch of large scales, instruments that were not designed for that yet they pick them up because there was a microwave? Well, we have a a surrogate target package of what we think these things are, at least from a what we’ve got reported to us that was in the front slide. Understanding how can I evaluate that against all of these other instruments? And do any of them have a chance of picking anything up that would be helpful in tipping and cueing us to get other sensors on target? I think leading that evaluation of the scientific ground based sensors would be useful. Also the same thing for the earth sciences satellites as we mentioned before. Intentional vise coincidental collection. So looking at how can I provide a tip and cue to both the ground and space based scientific and academic sensor community to put additional sensors on a object when it is reported? I’m currently doing that With AARO, the Joint Staff the commands for when they get tip in queue. Right? So a pilot says something, they see something they reported in, and we’re going to turn on a whole bunch of new collection to go after, I should be able to hand that same tip in queue to the scientific and academic community. So looking at how that works would be helpful. peer reviewing advanced capabilities, the parameterization and the publication of that that have not yet been engineered, we understand a lot of fundamental physics. It is the scientific community’s responsibility to explore and document those fundamentals in peer reviewed scientific journals to match to data so that we can weed out all kinds of different hypotheses. Right? That’s how science works, we need to make sure that we are doing that. I think leading that conversation would be very helpful from NASA’s perspective, archived scientific data. So we have a whole bunch of calibrated large scale scientific data from all these different instrumentations around the world. Taking a look at how can you apply some maybe some AI ml tools to search through that data for anomalous signatures that may correlate to things that we’ve got reporting on? That would be an interesting study, distributions of sightings, I think this is a low hanging fruit one, right. So if we take a look at all of the distributions of sightings that are outside of my national security areas that I’ve got classified reporting for, and they generate the similar distribution map as we’ve gotten, and we put those two pieces together, and now I have a holistic picture. And then, of course, our foreign partnerships, building a robust scientific community of interest review, data, capabilities, conduct analysis, expanding upon, you know, our military and intelligence collaborations across the world, into the scientific and academic world. And with that, those were my thoughts. We’ve talked about some of these in the past, it would be interesting to hear if there’s any further questions or deliberations on any of those points. And I’m happy to take any questions that you all have.

David Spergel  47:21

Great. Thank you, Dr. Kirkpatrick. And I also want to you take this opportunity to thank you in the ARL, for your openness in providing this committee with insight and information about what you’ve learned so far, how we could work together, I think this is very much an area where it’s going to be essential that NASA be your partner and be a good partner for a row. And I think you’re really want to thank you for your role with this committee, and helping to start to build that partnership. In my pleasure. And let’s register. Sure, thanks for the question.

Reggie Brothers  48:00

We talked a little more data already. Let’s talk about sensors for some time. So you mentioned that you were labs academia. Do you see a need to go beyond what you mentioned earlier? That is the type of sensor that we have right now, which are based on national security threats? And so phenomenologies and frequency range of these kinds of things. You see reasonable and beyond that? Yep, absolutely. What what are some challenges and see their materials?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  48:26

So can we go back to the front slide to the first slide where the target characterization is. So we’ve we’ve purpose built a couple of, of sensors to do search, across that note, down one, there you go, that’s great. To go down some of those characteristics to see if we can find them correlated to pilot reporting. Some of those are, initially this is going to be I’m gonna say this is a bootstrap method, right? We’re doing a broad spectrum search across very few indicators that we can point to, that will allow enable us to get a little bit more data or find that narrow those sensors and go from there. So we aren’t just relying on the DOD and icy sensors that exist today. Because frankly, they don’t point to where we want them to point. Right. I mean, I’ll be frank with with everyone. We we can point the largest collection apparatus in the entire globe at any point we want. You just have to tell me where I want to point it. The second piece of that is a lot of what we have is, is around the continental United States. Most people including the government, don’t like it when I point our entire collection apparatus to your backyard. Right, it’s not allowed. We have some laws about that. And we’ve got to figure out how to do this only in the areas that that I can get high confidence, there’s going to be something there. And high confidence, I’m not going to break any laws doing it. Right. So there’s a, there’s a trade there. So some of these ground base point detectors are going to be necessary for that to point up to point out to search, coupled with, we’re evaluating a number of sensor opportunities across different organizations, academia, industry, whatnot, that that already exist or are being built for similar purposes, or maybe other purposes that I might be able to recalibrate for this, and see if those will have a chance of of seeing that target. Right. So that’s where the modeling and sim comes in, can I can I take that target, put it into your sensor, and have a chance of seeing it? If I can, then I might want to use it.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  51:04

Or you go,

Nadia Drake  51:08

Thanks, Shawn, I have the questions you probably don’t want, which are about numbers, unless I missed them. During your presentation, you had said that only a very small percentage of your cases display signatures that could be anomalous, and then follow that up with a few objects that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics. What numbers are we talking about? How big is your database? How many years? Was it collected over? And are those observations made? And then by few, what do you mean,

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  51:37

right? Now? That’s a great question. So this chart, as I mentioned, we’ve updated with our current data holdings. At the time of my open hearing, we were at 650. Cases ish, we are now over 800. We are putting together our annual report, which will be due August one to the hill. And in it and there will be an unclassified version, as there always has been, we will have those updated numbers at that time, we roughly get I mean, you can do the math, you know, it depends anywhere from from 50 to 100 ish new reports a month. Now, the reason we had such a big jump recently is because I got FAA data integrated. And finally, and so we ended up with like 100 and some odd new cases. So there’s, there’s reason why it’s going to fluctuate the numbers that I would say, so we’re gonna we’re gonna try to do a little more of fidelity on some of the analytics when we report out. But the numbers I would say that we see are possible, you really anomalous are less than single digit percentages of those, that total database, so maybe two to five ish percent.

Jen Buss  53:21

All right. I’ll stand up because on the other end of the room, Thanks, Shawn, for your presentation, and for the some of the video footage that we saw. While we’re all good scientists on this panel, I think that I look at it with an untrained eye of looking at that video. And so I see three spots moving. And everything else in the background looks like it’s stable. Can you talk a little bit more about either the sensor platform or what we’re seeing that stable in the background? Because they’ve been identified as airplanes? And there’s clear description of from other data sources that came in to help clarify that. But when I look at this, what are all of the white spots in the background that we’re seeing that

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  54:03

are stable? So those are these that’s a star background? Pretty sure that star background now, so you’re looking at those planes were roughly 30 to 40 ish miles away, if I remember correctly, and when you see that smaller plane that comes in at the bottom. That one was much, much closer. It was like maybe six to 10 miles away. Right? And so the jitter in the sensor is what you’re looking at.

Jen Buss  54:46

Right Okay, so the three spots because they look like they’re moving at about the same rate. They are right and if they were flying together, but they’re not is what I’m hearing.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  54:58

They’re in the center They’re in a flight line. Right? So they’re equally spaced in a flight line and the sensor is jittering. Thank you. Yes. Appreciate that. Yes. Wait, wait. He’s been Walter has been waiting, patiently waiting. Okay, if

Walter Scott  55:14

you go to your first slide, if you don’t mind, not the title slide, but the trends, trends. Yeah. It’s the previous slide. There you go. Thank you. So I want to make sure I understand the slide it says typically reported characteristics. And there are a bunch of things here, like for example, size, altitude speed, if it’s being observed from a single sensor, use the example of like the airplanes that were coming in. And if you don’t know how far away they are, how do you assess the size? Right? How do you assess the speed? This is what people would report but it isn’t necessarily what is the real size of the object? Or the speed or the the rest of it? Do I understand that correctly?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  55:57

Partially. So yeah, this is not all single sensor observations. Some of these are very much multi sensor observations. And this is parameterised to cover the range of things for any given parameter range of what’s possible and what is then observed.

Walter Scott  56:18

Okay, and then on the next slide, the one where you’ve got the order is the meatball moving across the spray that one. So was there any look at sensor artifact data processing artifact? In the first thing that whenever I say anything that’s anomalous, I look at how was the data collected?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  56:45

Yeah. So yes, these are these are. So this is an EO sensor on MQ nine. And we understand that very, very well. Was that is that is a real object. Absolutely. And

Anamaria Berea  57:08

mentioned that partnership, Jamia, you also use AI ml techniques, or existing datasets? Or possibly some of them open source? Can you explain a little bit more what kind of AI ml techniques you’re using? Are these about anomaly detection, missing anything related to processing or using anything related to?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  57:33

So we’re looking at a number of different capabilities that span I think, a lot of what you’ve just said, so we’ve got we haven’t applied it yet. We are researching how we’re going to apply it. So natural language processing for the reports from the pilots, absolutely. Target recognition. So I can train a model to look for that thing. And go back through all of our holdings and go hatch, give me how many of these you have, right? And then try to figure out what those are. So I have not put anything out there yet, or have not looked at anything yet for active targeting in real time. Because I don’t know exactly what I would train it to go look for. I just know what we have. So I want to get more confidence on what we have before I go and do that. Except for balloons. We’re trying to get rid of balloons as quickly as possible.

Mike Gold  58:39

So Shawn, I just wanted to begin by thanking you for your service to this nation, this committee, you don’t exactly have the easiest job in Washington.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  58:45

No, I do not appreciate it. I’m glad to recognize that.

Mike Gold  58:49

We certainly do. I also want to commend you noting the international partnerships. Spain just signed the Artemis accords yesterday, increasing the membership to 25. I think that’s a global partnership that you could leverage. Only 170 more countries to go NASA. Everyone signed up. I just have two questions, one, relative to what Nadia was asking you about the number of anomalous phenomena. What makes it anomalous in your view, what is the phenomenology when you’re pulling those cases out? And saying this is truly unexplained? And then my second question would be relative to the stigma, how damaging is that in your view? And what in particular Do you think NASA can do to help remedy the situation?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  59:35

As a great question, so I’m going to take the second one first, because I know we’re getting short on time. The stigma has improved significantly over the years since the Navy first took this on, some years ago. It is not gone and in fact, I would argue the stigma exists inside the leadership of all of our our buildings. Right, wherever that is. My team and I have also been subjected to lots of harassment, especially coming out of my last hearing. Because people don’t understand the scientific method and why, why we have to do the things we have to do. Right. And because we can’t just come out and say, you know, the greatest, the greatest thing that could happen to me is I could come out and say, Hey, I know where all these things are. Here you go. Alright, but I don’t, right. And it’s gonna take us time to research all that. When people want answers now, and so they are, they’re actually feeding the stigma by by exhibiting that kind of behavior to all of us. Right? That is, that is a bad thing. Where can NASA help I made that recommendation on NASA should lead the scientific discourse, we need to elevate this conversation. We need to have this conversation in an open environment like this, where we aren’t going to get harassed. Because this is a hard problem. It is a hard target problem, we need to understand what is the things that are in all of our domains, Ace are air under sea? And how do we make sense of that? Your first question on what makes it anomalous to me, we actually developed some definitions on all of these things. We gave it both to the White House into Congress, I think we’ve gotten some of that into law now. But essentially anomalous is anything that is not readily understandable by the operator or the sensor. Right, so is doing something weird, whether that’s maneuvering against the wind at Mach two with no apparent propulsion, or it’s going into the water, which we have, we have shown is not the case, that is actually a sensor anomaly that we’ve now figured out, and we’re going to be publishing all that. You know, those kinds of things, make anomalous signature. We’ll call it signature management. But it’s things that are not readily understandable in the context of, hey, I’ve got a thing that’s out in the light, it should reflect a certain amount of light. If it doesn’t reflect that amount of light, something weird.

David Spergel  1:02:37

We have time for one last question.

Shelley Wright  1:02:41

Recommended for in partnership with NASA. I’m curious, especially given your math, have you up AARO partnered with international agencies? And there’s other ways for reporting to your?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  1:02:55

So that’s, that’s great question. I’m gonna expound on that just a little bit. So I have just held our first five eyes forum on this subject. Last week, I think it was earlier this week, I don’t know Dan, was there. And we have, you know, we’ve we’ve entered into discussions with our partners on data sharing, how do they do reporting? What kind of analysis can they help us with? What kind of calibration can they help us with? What can we help them with, and we’re establishing all of that right now. And they’re gonna end up, you know, sending their information and data to us to feed into the process that we’ve laid out for how we’re going to do all this. Beyond that, I have not had either the time or the bandwidth to do and that’s why I would look to NASA to expand the scientific and and, and academic relationships that they have across all of our allies and partners, on how can we bring them into the fold? That’s where I think there’s a lot of benefit to NASA taking lead on that.

David Spergel  1:04:10

Thank you. One, just clarification for people who don’t know, what are the five eyes?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  1:04:15

Oh, I’m sorry. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the five eyes, those are the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. So those are the five partners.

David Spergel  1:04:29

Terrific. So thank you

David Spergel  1:04:39

so our next presentation is from Mike free on from the FAA. Talking about the FAA is rolling what’s learned

Mike Freie  1:04:54

would like to thank the panel for the opportunity to come and give an overview of the FAA and some data points are Around the FAA VHS mission, the date of the FAA provides to provide the frame you know, what are the surveillance systems that that we can bring to bear are there there’s data around those sensors as well as to frame the limitations of those, you know, Shawn talked about some of the data points that that are used and being integrated. So hopefully this will give you an overview of the FAS mission, as well as as well as those data points. Next slide please. So the the FAS mission is is quite large and complex. By by a factor of two we operate more commercial aircraft than any other country. I think we’re second only to Australia in total airspace, but largely because Australia has a very large oceanic volume that they’re responsible for for managing. So it is a very complex, very large National Airspace System. We have over 14,000 controllers 520 air traffic control towers, which are located at the highest density of airports, and I’ll refer to those as towers and subsequent slides. We have 147 terminal radar approach controls or tray cones, and those are manned control facilities at the high and medium density airports around the nation, as well as 21 air traffic control centers, which are which managed the control of air traffic in the enroute environment. There’s 19,000 over 19,000 airports 5000 Over 5000 of those are associated public airports with the remaining 14,000 Plus private airports. Next slide please. So the FAA is mission is primarily around safe and efficient control of manned aircraft that has been her our historical mission and remains our primary mission. Certainly, as we talked about a new entrance with UAS is and advanced Air Mobility and some of those things, there will be an evolution of the FAS mission to include safe operation of the NASS with those those new entrants, but the architecture and design of the NASS is is geared around safe and efficient control of aircraft, unmanned aircraft. The certainly the the commercial aspect to commercial flights are a primary focus of the agency, we certainly support general aviation and flights as well. But again, our mission is around manned aircraft and safe and efficient operation of those. The by the numbers, over 16 million flights, nearly 5400 flights at peak at given the peak time of any given day. 45,000 daily flights 25 million GA flight hours per year, very large, very complex operation that that we’re responsible for managing, we certainly provide a significant contribution to to that for that service to the nation in the form of product toward a GDP. Next slide. So as we get into the discussion of surveillance services, I want to provide a little bit of framework around the categorization of our surveillance services. And we primarily break those into two, two bodies. The cooperative surveillance, which is defined by an A sensor, that’s avionics equipment on board, the aircraft that works in conjunction with ground based sensors, the noncooperative surveillance is independent this is basically the classic radar RF energy is transmitted out, reflects off the target and we receive a signal and from that return, we can determine where that there that aircraft is. Typically, these cooperative and noncooperative sensors are co located together, one cooperative mounted on top of the noncooperative radar. So for the purpose from a data perspective, I think in this panel in a study, I think that the Coopera sensors, those are neither unknown or anomalous. So for the purposes of this, this briefing of the rest of this briefing, I’m going to focus on the non cooperative aspect. Next slide, please. So, the, again, from the standpoint of the mission of the FAA around again, is primarily around manned aircraft. And I think that sort of serves as an important framework for the data points and the type of data that we can bring to bear for this panel. So we break our systems and the design of the systems into different types of systems. So we have short range radars, which are typically located at the high and medium density airports. And those operate from a range they have a detection range of between 40 and 60 miles and an altitude detection capability of about 24,000 feet. The long range radar systems have a detection range of two to 250 nautical miles with altitude detection up to 100,000 feet. So that provides the basic the framework for for those, I will mention the automatic dependent surveillance broadcast or ATSB, not only from the context that that does serve as a primary data source and a preferred data source for the management of the Airspace System. But it is a cooperative system. And for the purposes of the next slides as I get into the discussion of the coverage and the type of detection for those non cooperative targets, it is not considered as part of those. And also surface surveillance is also something that we provide but again, for the purpose of the study, I only include those for just a completeness perspective. The one final point on as I talk about manned aircraft and primary mission for the drones and balloons and things of that nature, their basic premise is to operate and not to interfere bases that they are not to interfere with manned operations. And that’s that’s a fundamental aspect as we talk to the data and what we can and can detect with respect to those non manned non manned systems. Next slide please. Realize that this is an eye chart because I would want it to provide just a graphical or pictorial depiction of where our sensors are located. The green, blue and pink balloons if you will, represent our short range radars, those are located at at airports, those are where those are sited, the the two reddish balloons to have letters in them a four and a C. Those represent our long range radars, the Arthur fours and Carcer systems that are used in the context of both from an air traffic control perspective as well as for a national defense and homeland security mission. And the the perimeter, the Arthur fours are located around the perimeter of the country equally spaced and the carceral systems are located on the interior of the US. I will point out that this only depicts the CONUS there are systems at ATC both short range and Long Range Systems, Hawaii, Alaska and Caribbean. Those are not depicted here. I don’t think they were necessary for the the purpose of understanding that surveillance. And I will also point out that both for this slide and the subsequent coverage slide we do not talk to any classified DoD or DJ systems than an operation. Next slide please.

Federica Bianco  1:13:09

So what it is, what can the FAA detect and surveil what can get me not this slide gives you a by altitude slice of what it is that we can detect. So if you look at the square that’s labeled 1000 foot AGL that depicts by sensor for an aircraft that is 1000 feet in altitude, what is the range at which we can detect that aircraft and so on as you get higher in altitude or further higher and altitude, you can detect it at further range and that’s basically a phenomena of the curvature of the earth and the line of sight aspect of these these radar systems. So, pretty good coverage across the US at 10,000 feet and above. This is a mathematical model based of a pure line of sight, as well as some geographical screening as you can see in the western part of the US there are there is screening due to the mountains and those sensors need to take a little bit of time and talk about the the nature of the targets these line of sight models represent an input of a target that is one square meter to think of a sphere of one meter in diameter. That’s the assumption that goes into these models. So if you think about that, in the context of other forms or aircraft, a fourth generation F 15 or F 18 is in the product proximity of about one square meter, perhaps a little bit larger. A large airliner is perhaps 100 square meters. A small UAS is perhaps one or point 01 square meter. So the range of these detections are there are the size and the ability to check these targets from an F 15. A large airliner, 100 times larger in size, a drone 100 times smaller in size. So the detection of an A surveillance capability really largely depends in part to the target that we’re talking about and the ability to surveil that target. Next line. So I do include this ADB ADSB coverage lie detector to give a context of from a cooperative perspective, there is very good coverage across the US to without 1500 feet above ground level. So this provide a context of what when we look at the data and start getting a discussion of what it is we can detect this will certainly for those cooperative aircraft that have ADSP, we can certainly detect those to a pretty pretty low altitude across across the US. All right, a couple of data points, I think, I know Shawn certainly talked about some of the data points and I can provide a little bit of insight. From an FA perspective. drones and drones are pretty significant challenge. As 880,000 registered drones in the US a small drones I should say, part one of seven drones. Many 10s of 1000 of those are operate operated on a daily basis for by commercial operators. It’s not clear how many private drone operators are taking their their drone up for a quick flight. But as I said earlier, those are regulated by the regulated to operate below 400 feet and altitude. So again, it’s the drone aspect is for those small drones in particular, as well as all of our classes of drones. There are regulatory restrictions to where they can and cannot fly basically avoiding and not interfering with manned aircraft operations. second data point we talked about balloons, the weather service, we know 190 or 92. Weather Stations are released balloons twice a day. It’s 6am and 00 100, Zulu and 1200. Zulu, typically two hour duration they fly up to 100,000 feet where the the envelope bursts and then the payload descends back back to Earth. So certainly 100 At least 184 balloon flights daily in the NASS you know not to consider universities and hobbyist balloons that may be launched, but those are typically small, small in size. And finally, Sean did talk about UAPs and FAA data, a couple of data points that we do report there is a process by which air traffic controllers can report UAP sightings or, or events. Historically, those have been in the range of about three to five reports per month that have been reported. We did see an uptick of reports in August of 22. That went up to about eight to 10 Perhaps due to start like Starlink launches. And finally the with the Chinese weather, or the Chinese balloon incidents in February, we did see a significant uptick and uptick and there’s like 68 UAP reports that that started in February. And we’ve seen a large number, you know, subsequent to them to that. I think that’s all I had any questions?

David Spergel  1:18:39

You want to take quick? It’s easy. You can choose the questioners it’s easy.

Walter Scott  1:18:44

Alright. So two questions. Two questions about the radar data coverage. First one is do you retain any of the data? Or is it just cycled over as

Federica Bianco  1:18:57

there is a retention and long term retention of data? I can’t recall exactly how long we retain that is certainly a requirement from a retention from, like legal perspective. Exactly. But I do know there is some periodicity in a measured and determined months

Walter Scott  1:19:16

retained in terms of like the raw radar or is some processed form of data that’s retained. I believe

Federica Bianco  1:19:23

it’s a process form of data that is what was displayed on the whether it’s an Indian route, ie RAM system or the star system.

Walter Scott  1:19:31

And then the other question is for the radars, are they operated in any sort of a tasked mode or are they constant search

Federica Bianco  1:19:40

the current systems in our inventory, just their their fixed face and they just rotate at either 12 RPM or five RPM depending on whether it’s an enroute or terminal surveillance? Thanks. All right. Next question. As

Warren Randolph  1:19:55

you mentioned, three to five reports from month

Federica Bianco  1:20:00

per month, that is three to five reports per month for all the controllers and all of us. So there’s a process by which if they see something and they want to report that they can go with to report that to the, the Den we call it but report, Hey, I saw something I don’t know what it was sets three to five per month across the entire 14,000 controllers per month. So, you know, 45,000 operations, any given day, 30 months, 30 days, however many days in a month, you know, it’s a very small percentage.

Federica Bianco  1:20:38

Can you describe actually about this? How do you do you encourage to report? Do you feel like the stigma on UAPs is impairing the reporting? Bias?

Federica Bianco  1:20:50

I’m not aware of all answer it this way. The the process by which UAP is reported is part of the air traffic controller order. So basically, the aircraft controllers are allowed that says, you know, if you see something, here’s a process by which the procedure by which you would report it. Other than that, I’m not aware of any any specific stigma or, or limitations and really brought brought in a good position to, you know, to speak to that other than there is that process, and that is the process that we use to and is what represents those numbers I talked to?

Federica Bianco  1:21:27

And if I may have had a question prior to this one, how do you, beside the sites where you deploy, you saw the map and has some very good coverage on the coastal areas, there were some areas of lack of coverage.

Federica Bianco  1:21:38

So if we went if you go back, go back one slide from what’s presented here, the what you’ll see is in the eastern half of the US, there’s a lot better coverage. But that’s because there’s a lot more population in the east, and therefore a lot more airports. And these systems are historically cited at the airport in support of those those airport operations to the west, obviously, oops, see less and less dense and fewer systems. Now the that’s from an ASR, the short range radar perspective, the long range radars are pretty much equally spaced to provide in order to provide the maximum coverage from a Homeland Defense and Security perspective as well as with a higher altitude flights the enroute crews phase of air traffic control.

Warren Randolph  1:22:33

More, Mike, first, thank you in the FAA, for coming to share this information with us. Second, I can you speak to a little bit of the filtering techniques that we use. So with respect to AI, no alternative question about the raw data and process, but can you just talk a little bit about, we actually

Federica Bianco  1:22:49

aren’t trying to detect everything? You know, that’s actually a very good question and a very good point with respect to what we can and cannot see. So there are, you know, the closer to the ground, you point a radar certainly can get lower elevations, but you also start to see the effects of trees and other ground based clutter, as we call it, that starts to interfere. So we have great ability to detect a lot of things but but from an FAA mission perspective, our desire is to find that sweet spot of seeing everything to as low and altitude as we can to maximize our mission around safe operations of manned aircraft, and how to pull that thread just a little bit further. You know, there’s also limitation with respect to biologicals or insects and dust and things of this this flavor that most aircraft fly above a certain speed. So we typically will have filtering settings on our systems to get rid of the stuff that really is leaves or insects or things of that nature. So that we provide as clean a display for the controllers. So there are specific settings that we can can adjust. And it’s been learned over many years to perfect those, what we call optimization of those kinds of filters to get rid of what is not a manned aircraft, not an aircraft, and provide as clean a display for the controllers as we can. Yes.

Reggie Brothers  1:24:20

Thank you, thanks for the presentation. Would it be a farm what would you say more would be possible to to collect the raw data? But to say that because if it would be possible to do some calibration after the fact that Shawn was mentioning, for example, you might be to capture the phenomenology. Is it possible?

Federica Bianco  1:24:39

Well, when you say raw data, I think you’d have we’d have to talk a little bit about what is meant. So you know what, from a technical perspective, pure, we’ll be we’ll call Inq data is huge, huge, you know, gigabyte, very, very, very large volumes of data. That would probably be cost prohibitive. We certainly don’t do that today. The there are, again, we do record data, but it is effectively the data that is has been through some form of these processes in these filter rings. We do that today. But it certainly within the time and money, we could certainly collect that data and I think it would, but it would be, we’d have to look at the challenge of, of how we would go about modifying the systems or introducing new ways to collect that that raw data as you as you described, certainly, it’s feasible. It’s possible. But it’s not without technical challenge. Yes,

Reggie Brothers  1:25:35

184 balloon flights daily, are those characters, or they just you just know, they do that, and then they end up with it.

Federica Bianco  1:25:41

So under the balloon, I’ll call it part 101. The regulations for balloons, there’s very specific requirements. So for National Weather Service, before they release those, they’ll contact a local air traffic facility, they’re gonna say, here’s what time I’m going to release it. And when they release it, they have tracking. And they provide that tracking to the air traffic control facility. Throughout the flight of that particular balloon, there are commercial balloons that are also launched. But those most for the most part, as I understand that have, they actually transmit their GPS position in support of where they’re flying so as to ensure they’re not interfering with with air traffic, and to ensure that air traffic controllers are aware of where those those balloons are operating? Yes, ma’am.

Shelley Wright  1:26:28

So, we’ve talked about recording the three to five, from air traffic control, but what about from the noncooperative surveillance that they’ve been anomalies from the sensors themselves? And if so, what is the process for that?

Federica Bianco  1:26:43

I say the FAA mission is not around anomalies with the noncooperative sensors themselves. So as we build an air traffic control picture, we have both the noncooperative systems which detects the target, we have a cooperative system that also detects a target, and we will tend to merge those those targets together. And so when our controllers display, they’ll know is this a nonprofit only, or merged or combined target. So they they know, you know, basically, an increased level of confidence that on what it is they’re seeing is, in fact, a real aircraft. So we don’t make any real distinction between a non cooperative and a cooperative, other than how they get combined and put on a controllers display. So I don’t know if that answered your. So so like a GA flight that doesn’t notice flying visual flight rules, those will just be picked up by the FAA, even if they don’t, if they’re not equipped with with a court with a cooperative avionics, those would just be picked up by the non cooperative system, that if they happen to surveil where that aircraft is fine, and so that certainly will be put on the controllers display. And they will be able to provide awareness. In fact, there’s a flight following procedure by which GA pilots can ask for, hey, I’m not, I’m not squawking. I don’t have a corporate system. But please help me and just through via the radio, I’m going to go on from here to here and in providing awareness, situational awareness, if the controller has the bandwidth to to provide that data,

David Spergel  1:28:24

when most questions.

Mike Gold  1:28:26

So I’m not a scientist, I’m a recovering attorney. And I love process. And few questions there. If I’m a pilot, where do I find that process for reporting UAPs? Where’s that articulated or captured? Second, when you mentioned that you’re reporting these incidents? Who are you reporting it to? And are those incidents pulling on the thread that registered? Are they being archived anywhere?

Federica Bianco  1:28:47

I believe they are archived, they reported to the domestic network event Network is an NFA organization or function? I don’t I can’t speak to whether for whether they would be say part of what Shawn would would include as part of his database, I presume so. So I think that was answered the second question, was the first question again, I’m sorry,

Mike Gold  1:29:12

where does the reporting process live? If I’m a pilot, I see a new IP where do I go to find

Federica Bianco  1:29:17

that? I don’t know the answer to that question. I said, I’m familiar with the reporting process from a controller perspective and the order that’s that use to define how controllers do their job? I am not I don’t know the answer to the question from a pilot perspective.

David Spergel  1:29:35

Great, so thank you, Mike, for your presentation and for all the help the FAA has given us as we’ve been learning more about the very impressive system that the FAA maintains. Thank you. I know. You know, for me, one of the many takeaways from this is filling it, you know, just a little bit safer. Every time I fly. I’m thankful for you and your colleagues for what they do to make that possible. And Yep. And we’re now going to take a quick lunch break, we’ll be back at 1230. And see you all soon. The next part of our sessions, series of short presentations by members of the panel on their thoughts on different aspects of our charge. And the format is we’re going to have them come up to the podium and speak. And I’m going to ask each of the speakers then to take questions. It’s actually the angle with this setup, as you can see the people better from the podium than I can where it’s hard to see people behind you. I’m going to try to keep manage the time. So as those questions, you know, come to an end, I’ll cut you off and bring up the next speaker. And we’ll move through the the six topics and then we’ll have some time at the end for some general discussion. The first speaker will be Dr. Nadia Drake, talking about framing the issue of UAP.

Nadia Drake  1:31:10

Hello, and welcome back from lunch, everybody, and welcome to those of you watching us virtually, I’m Nadia. I am a scientist by training. I’m also a science journalist now. And my job is to try and synthesize the information that we’ve learned so far, and summarize the situation. So if you will put together a framework for thinking about UAP. Now I’m going to try and do this in a way that reflects the thoughts of the entire panel, although obviously we have a variety of opinions and ideas among us. So I’d like to leave some time at the end for you to weigh in with disagreements or concurrences as needed. So first housekeeping matter, the definition of UAP changed during the seven months of our fact finding process. UAP initially stood for unidentified aerial phenomena with aerial referring to events occurring in Earth’s atmosphere that is now defined as anomalous which includes the space air and undersea domains. As a panel, I think we have decided to continue focusing our recommendations on the aerial domain because that is where the majority of sightings and events have occurred. And also because we couldn’t fully pivot to address the expanded scope of the new acronym. Beyond that, there are three points I want to make. The first is that for a number of reasons UAP are obviously quite interesting. Right? That is why we are here. Recently, many credible witnesses have reported seeing unidentified objects in the sky, some of which are behaving rather peculiar Lily peculiarly. In some instances, these reports include corroborating data from various instruments, various sensors. The challenge that we have, is that the data needed to explain these anomalous sightings often do not exist, or incomplete for generating a conclusive analysis. This includes eyewitness reports, which on their own can be interesting and compelling, but often lack the information needed to make definitive conclusions about an object’s provenance. We as a panel are thinking about the types of data that might add value to those reports, and which could be useful on their own. As a corollary to date, in the refereed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extra terrestrial origin for UAP. Collecting more good data for the scientific community to review and a peer reviewed context will be important for progress to be to be made here. Second point UAP offer an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the power of the scientific method and of empirically addressing a question using a multidisciplinary approach. It is our job as a panel to make some recommendations about how NASA might go about tackling this topic scientifically, taking advantage of the agency’s resources, global outreach and reputation. Key points to keep in mind here are that science is hypothesis science is hypothesis driven. Scientists build confidence in their theories, by relying on well calibrated well collected data, using well established methods with rigorous evaluation and independent corroboration. In science, skepticism is not a bias, nor is it a bad word. It is not our job to define nature, but to study it in ways that let nature reveal itself to us. Regardless of how exciting or disappointing that reality might be. And to that end, when we’re thinking about making recommendations about how NASA can tackle this topic scientifically, I think it’s important to remember that it’s not NASA’s job to replicate the efforts of the department of defense, but rather to consider approaches that are complementary and to what the all domain anomaly resolution office is doing. And so one of the questions that we as a panel, I think need to center is what can we recommend that NASA can do that the DoD cannot? Third point to that, and what are we even looking for? How are we defining this problem? And how do the available data define what seems to be to borrow a cliche, a very slender needle in a very big haystack. We heard a little bit about that today from Dr. Kirkpatrick, who reported that there have been 800 events collected over about 27 years. And between two and 5% of those events display signatures that could be anomalous, defined as anything that is not readily understandable by the operator or the sensor, something that is doing something weird, Mr. Free, and some of the experts on our panel have to find the background on which those events exist, the amount of stuff in the sky at any given time, like so. On average, FAA, air traffic control handles 45,000 flights per day in US airspace, with 5400 aircraft in the sky at peak time. Worldwide. On average, there are about 1600 weather balloon launches per day. In the US there are at least 184 of those balloons launched. And that doesn’t include private companies or research flights. There are about 1.6 9 million recreational or model small uncrewed aircraft systems, and an additional 880,000 Drones are registered for commercial use. And these are not controlled by air traffic control. And they are not scheduled flights. So that’s our challenge. So when making recommendations as a panel, I think we need to look at what kind of imprint we want to leave. What does the situation look like five years from now? What does it look like 10 years from now? Why are we making these recommendations? We heard a little bit about this this morning, from both Mike and David, who noted that many discoveries in science are rooted in initially unexplained and bizarre phenomena. So by carefully scrutinizing the sky or however, we end up defining our search space, and by collaborating across disciplines, we are likely to learn new things about our planet. That’s a fact. And that’s the commensal science case we might want to consider when making recommendations here. All right. Does anyone have thoughts,

David Spergel  1:37:29

questions, thoughts, comments? Currently,

Karlin Toner  1:37:37

I guess I’m gonna challenge a little bit. We take from time to time legislation required. And I’m not sure we’ve precluded anything beyond the aerial for this panel. And so I’m just very sad because mustard for us, even though mostly what we’ve seen, and I think national is NASA’s mission space, looking for the Aerial?

Nadia Drake  1:38:02

I agree with you. And I think that is a parameter that we need to define as a panel.

Dan Evans  1:38:08

Yeah, I’ll just quickly jump in and echo some remarks I made this morning that yes, the age change from aerial to anomalous. But it’s also accurate to say that the preponderance of events are in the areal domain. That being said, your panel scope has expanded outwards. And I think we’ll hear a little bit from David later on that very subject.

David Spergel  1:38:30

When I think anomalous, people often think about it as going down and including ocean. But I think what’s very relevant for NASA is going out. Right, and, you know, looking at things in our solar system, and I think, in some sense, I think there’s certain responsibilities in you know, we look at airspace, there’s FAA responsibilities, there’s DoD responsibilities, as you get further and further away from the Earth. Eventually, it’s all NASA once you get up, you know, towards most certainly much of the solar system and out to our galaxy, the tour NASA, and when we start thinking about things like, you know, and this will be David, we’ll get to this observations beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. I think this change in language lets us also think about our you know, further out in the solar system as well. Other thoughts? Great. Did

Nadia Drake  1:39:37

I summarize everything totally, accurately Awesome.

Paula Bontempi  1:39:54

All right. All right. Thank you. So I thought that was the perfect To intro and segue by Dr. Drake for addressing why NASA what, what is or what are NASA’s roles in UAP studies. So, NASA primarily is a science driven agency. It’s committed to exploring and understanding air and space. And this includes, as we were just discussing the unknown, right? Whether that’s the farthest reaches of the Universe, or right here on our home planet. In that light, NASA has over 60 years of experience measuring phenomena in air in space in space, an air that might be aeronautics, astronomy, as well as measuring other Earth phenomena, and this may include aquatic or atmospheric phenomena as well. And they do this using the unique vantage point of space. NASA’s mission, data and technical expertise in science and engineering may also help investigate and understand any of the reported phenomena. It makes sense to explore what new observations or measurements or studies might contribute to the understanding of reported phenomena. In that light, Dr. Fox made this point this morning, there’s a tremendous archive of NASA data. These are from satellites and other space based and ground networks as well as other assets. And these are freely and openly available to the public. Now NASA research as was mentioned also supports a wide range of methods. This includes advanced data analysis, modeling, cutting edge, computational and data visualization tools, and these are all useful for investigating unexplained observations, which may be crucial in studying these phenomena. discoveries and results are all publicly available. And this can be something from the characterization of extra terrestrial solar planets or the hole in the ozone layer. And these are communicated publicly through many outlets through the agency. NASA also has a long standing public trust. This is essential to communicate those findings about phenomena to the public. And as was mentioned several times very important to destigmatize the reporting and raise awareness of cultural and social barriers to doing so. NASA has a unique strength in leveraging public and private partnerships that could result in new technologies that may be useful in observing and understanding reported phenomena. These partners could include other federal agencies we’ve heard from the FAA today, as well as NOAA was identified. And they may collect data that could help to understand reported phenomena. In addition, NASA has a strong record of international collaboration, which could be beneficial to study any of these phenomena as that may require global cooperation and data sharing. And then, one thing that really strikes me is that new understanding of anomalous events really comes from when we bring communities together interdisciplinary communities that would not necessarily collaborate. And in my world, that might be biological and physical oceanographers. And I tell people to think a little more broadly, what if we brought together astronomers and scientists like we did on this panel. So that those interdisciplinary research teams as well as citizen scientists could explore historical and current NASA and partner data for events or more importantly for environmental conditions around the time of reported events. And this may help in our understanding. And then finally, given us his experience with long term missions, long term projects in scientific focus, the agency is really well equipped to handle the extensive and ongoing study of phenomena investigation that this likely requires. So hopefully, that gave you some thoughts as to why NASA I don’t know if any of my fellow panelists agree or disagree. Discuss. Yes,

Federica Bianco  1:44:25

Apollo, thank you. So NASA has a great visibility in the community and not and UAVs are obviously of great interest to a very diverse range of people. So can you speak a bit about the opportunity that this provides for NASA to expand, you know, the knowledge or the understanding of the scientific method?

Paula Bontempi  1:44:46

Yes. So it’s a great question. There are multiple opportunities, I think, UAP present. The first as I mentioned, I think is to bring together interdisciplinary research teams and scientists and citizen scientists to really take a look at with a an objective and perhaps unique eye. What the NASA Data Archive actually means blending the partnerships, a renewed partnership that’s at the federal, the International and the private level. Right. So I think there are any number of pathways that people could pursue that could be really advantageous for helping us to understand what’s happening with any reported UAP.

Shelley Wright  1:45:34

questions. Thank you, Paula. This is jelly. Right. Actually, my question and comment actually goes to both you and Nadia. Dr. Kirkpatrick gave us a definition of anomalous that was that it was not readily understandable to the operator of the sensor. And from the NASA perspective, and we’re a panel, I think we have to consider a broader definition if we’re talking about citizen science. And I’m curious of how we incorporate that, especially within the communication avenues that we were just discussing.

Paula Bontempi  1:46:11

It’s a good question. So not all data in an archive are user friendly, right, right out of the gate. But I think NASA does an excellent job. Making things like quick look or browse products available, you can go on the NASA website, you can look at different aspects of different things that the agency has its mission to study. And I think, if nothing else, people have become a lot more in touch with their surroundings, and their environment and the changes happening there. And so I think there’s probably an opportunity for people to maybe not become overnight experts in how to process satellite data and use it for basic research in a complex fashion. But there are ways to utilize those data to look at your environment, if you think you’ve, you know, seen something or you wish to report something. So communication engagement in the public, I think is a really important part of the D stigmatization for short. Nadia, I don’t know if you have anything to add.

Nadia Drake  1:47:17

I was I was struck by the phrase not readily understandable. I felt like that was actually doing a lot of work. So I think for our purposes, we probably want to come up with a slightly more specific definition of what anomalous actually means. Yes, yeah.

David Spergel  1:47:37

Thanks, Federico, next.

Federica Bianco  1:47:48

Hello, everybody. My name is Federico Bianca. I am an astrophysicist and a data scientist and I bring this perspective to the panel. So for the next few minutes, I want to emphasize some of the things that my colleagues have already mentioned about the data, particularly the status of the data that exists, and what the data that we should collect, to really understand what maybe we’ve already heard in a few cases by a few people that NASA’s role is to explore the universe. Through the scientific method. The application of the scientific method to discovery requires that the data meets some standards that allow the data driven approach, and there are many standards that have been established in the scientific community over the years. I can mention one, for example, is called the fear standard, where fear stands for find the ability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. The current status of the data about UAPs does not meet the standards. The data collection is inconsistent, it’s in our genes, it’s uncalibrated. They they are poorly documented, and largely incomplete. They’re also not enough systematically retrievable, which causes a problem in automation of the analysis. So what could benefit from data science and machine learning methods from artificial intelligence that is developing at a rapid pace, but machine learning and AI cannot be applied until the data meet the standards. Even to study a single event currently requires a significant lift in retrieving the data and the metadata that may or may not be available. And this lift is at the moment entirely personal power, which means that it cannot be automated to apply machine learning methods. Organized repositories need to exist to enable the automation of retrieval of the data and the metadata and this is a necessary premise to enable the systematic scientific approach. So the study of will UAPs anomaly detection is a well developed although notoriously hard discipline and which has seen tremendous advances recently with data science and machine learning. Usually, this means the Tag Team rare and unusual signals in a complex that is no Wizzy and rich with phenomena that we know. So there are two general approaches to anomaly detection in the scientific community. One is the following. If we know the signal that we expect, we can model it, and we can simulate it and maybe inject it in our data. So we can develop methods that are specific to finding those exact signals or signals that are similar to those. And we might be able to conceptualize signals coming from a physical system that responds to the laws of physics, as we know them, but we cannot comprehensively produce all possible signals that could relate to or explain UAPs. So, the alternative approach in detecting anomalies requires a thorough and deep understanding of what is normal and usual, to tease out what is unusual. And unlike the rest, these methods typically fall in the realm of what we call unsupervised machine learning. What is usual maybe the balloons the aircraft and wealth are natural phenomena that we have heard us and what is unusual what is an anomaly is anything that is not consistent with the way in which those things look in our data. Once the anomalous signal is detected, it can be studied in more depth either through the discovery data itself, but that may not be sufficient. So then we may need to collect additional data for to study these these anomalies. And this is something that in astrophysics, we typically refer to as follow up data. This can be very hard, especially if the phenomena that are anomalies are also ephemeral in time, so you have to promptly respond to the detection and set up follow up observations. It’s an extremely hard game, but it’s something that is seeing a large developing in astrophysics in recent years with the study of anomalous detections in the universe. This approach relies entirely on a comprehensive and systematic organization of the data, which is paramount and on a deep understanding of all the data that is actually usual and known. The data that we may want to collect ideally will be collected in a multi sensor and multi platform and multi site manner. I witnesses reports, I want to elevate what Dr. Drake said, cannot ascertain the nature of UAPs. However, they should be considered because they may contain important information. For example, persistent sampling locations are seasonality, but they only really work if join with quantitative data collected by sensors as well as your physical and psychophysical assessments of the witness and the impact that the experience has on them to really reveal the nature of UAPs. You’ve heard it from from my colleagues a number of times, the data needs to be collected by sensors they need to be calibrated or calibrated both. So we need to collect not only the data images, sound spectrum, characterization of what we see, but metadata, the sensor type, the brand, the brand of the sensor, the noise characteristics, time of the acquisition instrument sensitivity, as well as information about the circumstances of the data collection, for example, temperature, or the location or the conditions in which the sensor is at the time of collecting the data. The data should be collected simultaneously by different platforms, ideally, ideally in different location in a multi sensor system. So some of the data that we may want to collect are images, but also temperature sound recording spectral data emissivity that tells you the color in a very fine grid, as well as other as well as monitoring the motion of objects, which has been very important to identify what we have seen as UAPs have been reported. Much of this certainly can be achieved with professional grade infrastructure, and both new and existing infrastructure to do that, such as astrophysical and geographical observatories, boots on the ground and satellites. Some modern observatories, in particular designed for the detection of time anomalies specifically, as well as for the detection of objects that move rapidly in space, Near Earth Objects, asteroids, meteors, etc. So those could be leveraged for the study of UPS. There is also some effort in ongoing in the developing of facilities that are specifically to detect design to detect UAPs. And many of those comply with the characteristics that I just described. This level of information, though, can also be obtained by the public. We could crowdsource the data collection if a platform to crowdsource exists that supports the collection of data and metadata and the transmission of data and metadata. And we think that NASA might be able to play an important role in the development of this platform. To echo what Dr. bontempi said, NASA has a wealth of experience in coordinating scientific studies, efforts across discipline. Then in domains serving as a bridge between communities in Interdisciplinary Studies, and studies across different countries, all of these can be supported, got of these can be leveraged to support the work of the other agencies in the identification and explain explaining, explaining UAPs. Nas also has a really important experience in data curation, we have heard about the sophistication of the analysis of the data that NASA provides of the sophistication of the calibration, that the data that NASA shares arrives to, we have heard about the open data policy that NASA data goes under. Furthermore, NASA has recently spearheaded an effort review NASA and NASA partner archival data, to prepare them for machine learning and AI. So that data can be served to the community directly am ready to apply AI methods on it. This is an important experience, then could be leveraged in the study of UAPs. However, we do want to emphasize that the current status of the UAP data will make this lift really hard compared to even what is being done by NASA for astrophysical data. And finally, I wanted to emphasize on my colleagues at NASA has a great visibility UAPs ever great power of great public interest. And this could be an opportunity to really increase the reach of science, help people understand the scientific process, and maybe diversify the scientific community by attracting new talent into the scientific community due to the visibility of the problem. And I think that’s all of my remarks.

Walter Scott  1:56:42

questions already. So on the whole crowdsourcing front and getting reports from citizen scientists, what do you think along those lines? Is it providing a set of guidelines for how you report? Is it open sourcing a set of applications for cell phones to be able to pull in a lot the right read metadata? What does that look like?

Federica Bianco  1:57:08

Yeah, so I think guidance wouldn’t just accept our guidance, best practices, etc, would just not be sufficient. I think what needs to be provided is a platform. You mentioned cell phones, cell phones have been used for crowdsourcing the study and detection of a number of things, you know, astrophysics, in space science. So that can definitely be done. The issue I think, is going to be to make sure that this platform is that this plus one reaches a large enough community to really have a crowd to source the problem and coordination, something that this could achieve, for example, is the follow up that I mentioned earlier, right. So we need this conduit community that would use the crowdsourcing facilities to be connected, so that if something is cited by one person, that message can go across and a broader community can point their sensors to the problem to the fighting, and the data has to be transmitted to the end that has to be transmitted to a place that can centralize it and curate it.

Reggie Brothers  1:58:18

Please feel free to sit isn’t bad idea. But have you thought about synthetic data? As you were talking, I was thinking, you know, given the fact we don’t have enough quality data to train a net a neural net, if we’re to generate synthetic data based on the information we do have, and then filling out the other characteristics, as we might guess, does that help us train somebody to iterate in AI to be to find other correlations within data as we get it?

Federica Bianco  1:58:43

So we do it all the time in data science, right? We do generate datasets where the datasets are sparse, or scars, and we cannot train machine learning models. It’s a risky business, because in the data that we generate, we embed the bias that we have. So we are thinking about the data, the way in which we think the data looks and the way in which the thing do the anomalies look. So if particularly in anomaly detection, it is a very difficult thing to do. To try to make sure that you don’t bias your models to what

David Spergel  1:59:14

you know, I want to come back to this topic of anomaly discussion in our general discussion. We’re starting to run a little late. So we’re gonna cut off questions now. But we do have a little time later at the end. So don’t forget, don’t forget your questions, bring them up again in discussion, and we’ll we’ll talk more more later. Great. So David’s, our next speaker

David Grinspoon  1:59:44

All right, good afternoon. My name is David Grinspoon. I’m a planetary scientist and astrobiologist, and I’m going to talk for just a couple of minutes about how observations beyond Earth are relevant to our Study of UAPs. Many of NASA’s missions are at least in part, focused on answering the question of whether life exists beyond Earth. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. As part of this, we consider how to search for bio signatures, observations we can make of other planets, which may might betray the presence of life. So we look for things like anomalous gases in the atmospheres of planets, and other anomalies, which may possibly reveal the presence of life. When we discover such an anomaly, we don’t conclude that we’ve discovered life, we seek more data to understand what we’re seeing. And often this leads to other new discoveries. Similarly, we can talk about looking for techno signatures, observations we can make, which might reveal the presence of technological activity somewhere else. NASA is also supporting some research studying techno signatures. While there is at present, no evidence, we’re aware of suggesting an extra terrestrial source for UAPs. These existing NASA programs are relevant to the question of UAPs in at least two way is it a known or unknown natural phenomena? Must it be technological? Is it known terrestrial technology. So these scientific communities have relevant experience in determining and communicating about whether observations which first appeared to reveal extraordinary evidence actually justify making extraordinary claims. Second, if we do acknowledge an extraterrestrial source, however unlikely as one possibility for UAPs, then these objects must have traveled through the solar system to get here. within the scientific community, there’s a widespread, but by no means universal belief that there are extraterrestrial civilizations, and we have a well developed rationale. There’s a lot of literature for discussing this, which I won’t go into now, in the interest of brevity, but it has to do with the vast numbers of exoplanets and the timescales of evolution and the possibility of convergent evolution on different planets leading to somewhat similar outcomes. It’s a fascinating subject. But the the relevant point here is that the same rationale, which says support supports the idea that extra extraterrestrial civilizations may exist, and may be detectable, also supports the idea that finding extraterrestrial artifacts in our own solar system is at least plausible. NASA is the lead agency for solar system exploration. It already has an active program of detecting objects in our solar neighborhood, using both ground based and space based facilities. And it could leverage those capabilities to search for objects in space with anomalous motion, anomalous trajectories, unusual light curves, anomalous spectral signatures, or other characteristics. Most of the solar system has not been searched for artifacts or anomalies. And these modest data analysis efforts could potentially be applied to existing and planned planetary missions. The Galaxy does not stop at the edge of the solar system, and the solar system does not stop at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s all a continuum of possibilities worthy of investigation. If NASA applies the same rigorous methodology toward UAPs, that it applies to the study of possible life elsewhere, then we stand to learn something new and interesting, whatever the ultimate explanation is, of those phenomena. And that’s all I wanted to say right now.

David Spergel  2:04:04

We have time for one or two comments or questions or thoughts?

Paula Bontempi  2:04:12

Yeah, thank you for that, you know, it struck me while you were speaking about bio signatures that we do a lot of that type of analysis, right, and our home planet in different capacities. And so it’s more of a comment. But I wonder your thoughts on you know, bringing together those communities that might not work together, and whether that would aid in, you know, not only establishing what’s normal, but to, you know, enabling the detection, or maybe the understanding explanation of a UAP if reported?

David Grinspoon  2:04:47

Absolutely. I mean, you know, the focus of my talk was was observations elsewhere, but in fact, most of what the field of astrobiology has to study is here on Earth, because after all, it’s our one example of an inhabited planet and it’s a little bit you easier to get to to make observations? So, yes, any any insights you have in that area or any any suggestions for for collaboration between those communities would be very valuable.

Shelley Wright  2:05:17

So, of course, NASA hasn’t been researching the techno signature field for very long, and there’s been a stigma with techno signatures for many decades. Are there any lessons learned, we can impose from the techno signature in the SETI community, to the UAP, and solar system? Studies?

David Grinspoon  2:05:37

So really good question. I guess the immediate thought it sparks in me is that, yeah, techno signatures, were kind of treated, kept at arm’s length for a long time by NASA because of stigma, and ultimately, can’t be kept away forever. If you’re, if you are an agency curiosity driven, trying to understand the whole universe, you have to move beyond stigmas, and just try to honestly look at whatever evidence there is. And so I think in that broad sense, the same lesson ought to apply to UAPs.

Anamaria Berea  2:06:16

Um, as someone who has been working in astrobiology and data sciences for some time now, it strikes me when both Dr. Bianco and you talked that the differences that seemed to me between bio signatures and techno signatures fields, and UAAP field, again, relies on the data. So bio signatures and techno signatures they have very well standardized datasets they have collected, been collecting datasets for some time, and they are able to apply machine learning artificial intelligence algorithms. While it’s a totally different question with UAPs, in how we can apply artificial intelligence here. So again, just like Dr. Of Yaga, how she said, it’s about data standardization. So I hope that the UAP field will learn how to work with the data from the bio signatures and techno signatures fields.

David Grinspoon  2:07:13

Yeah, that’s a good point, the one, the one point I push back on a little bit is whether techno signatures has been has a lot of data in that sense. The one part of techno signatures, which is looking for signals from radio and optical, and that sort of thing that’s been, you know, associated with SETI for a long time. You’re right, there’s a lot of data there that we’ve been collecting, but the term techno signatures, this sort of newly being adopted in it. In a way, it reminds me the distinction, we heard from the FAA about a cooperative and noncooperative, that with techno signatures we’re looking, there’s more of an emphasis on finding technology that is not necessarily intended to signal us but just sort of doing what technology does, and finding ways to, you know, so it’s not looking for signals as much. And in that domain, we have not necessarily been collecting information for that long but, But your point is well taken that there are lessons learned from certainly the astrobiology and the the sort of classical SETI field where we’ve had a lot of data and we could look at how that is analyzed, and try to collect the data for UAPs that will be amenable to that same sort of analysis.

David Spergel  2:08:23

Thank you. Close next.

Karlin Toner  2:08:35

Hello, everybody. I’m Carolyn toner. I’m an aerospace engineer, you know, really struck me when Dr. Drake opened up this afternoon and talked about this really small needle in a really big haystack that we’re looking for. And I’m going to talk to you about reporting a theme that we’ve heard a lot, how can we make that haystack smaller and that needle bigger? So reporting of UAP events has received a lot of attention recently. But I think that there are still barriers for people to report. How are where should they report? Will someone take action on their report? Well, the reporter be believed, or will they be shamed? We’ve heard over the course of our fact finding that many scientists and aviators consider the study of UAPs to be fringe at best. So this suggests there’s a significant negative stigma associated with reporting or even researching such phenomena. That said, By encouraging military aviators to disclose anomalies that they’ve seen or detected, the Department of Defense is receiving many more reports. I think, in the time that we’ve been looking at this topic, growing from an ODI report that was something like 500 to I think this morning, we heard something like 800 now so that’s accelerating And then DoD will soon also mandate if not already reporting by pilots, which will even grow that set. I would propose to this panel that NASA can help make it safer for researchers to explore data in the civil airspace domain. Simply by starting that work internally. NASA could look at how civil anomaly data is shared. study how to incentivize reporting, assess the possibility of crowdsourcing data, which I think we’ve heard a bit about this afternoon, or sponsor and participate in conferences on UAP detection. Our team has really only seen I’d say a few unclassified images of UAP, which lack the contextual data that’s needed to understand their true nature. And I believe we’ve heard a single firsthand account from a former military aviator. So one of my colleagues, Josh has an example, to show just why it would be important for NASA to also shout helped shape how the data and information is reported. But before I turn the mic over to Josh, I want to make a recommendation to my fellow panelists, that we consider advising NASA to more fully assess the cultural and social barriers to studying and reporting UAP. And for NASA to implement a plan to leverage its brand image to start removing these obstacles that

David Spergel  2:11:41

go up and that will take discussion.

Joshua Semeter  2:11:45

So you can call my slide deck if you want.

Joshua Semeter  2:12:00

So it’s not it’s not the charge of our panel to evaluate UAP evidence. But part of our statement of task is to assess the scientific analysis techniques that are available, you don’t have to start it just yet. And the and how we might use them to determine the physical constraints on UAP. You know, the UAP reports with the most detailed contextual informations are the ones from the Navy aviators, and they’re using a combination of of ranging, and infrared imaging information. And for these cases, we can directly calculate critical parameters of a UAP, such as altitude and velocity under certain assumptions. And it’s, you know, the main point I want to make here is that this multi sensor approach is absolutely critical to charting a path forward for UAP investigations, and that pertains to NASA as well. So I’m going to provide one example here just to illustrate the crucial role of science and scientific analysis and the role of scientific analysis to avoid misinterpretation in some sense. Next build. Hit space. Yeah, okay, so this is this video was recorded by pilots deployed from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2015. The example has been given the nickname go fast, because it gives an impression of an object moving very rapidly against the ocean surface. And, you know, the question is, is this impression correct? And, you know, if not, what can we say quantitatively about what that object is doing in kind of Earth’s centered coordinate system. Fortunately, the information needed to determine the altitude and velocity of this object is contained on the display. So go ahead and next. And this includes the elevation angle of the camera, the Asmath angle of the camera, the target range and nautical miles, aircraft altitude, the time reference and seconds, indicated airspeed and knots. You know, this information in this video in particular has been discussed quite a bit on the on the web. So let’s begin with the object altitude. Next, please. So knowing the Jets altitude and the bearing to the target, we can apply basic trigonometry to figure out where that object is in altitude space. And it’s turns out to be, you know, provided the range information is accurate, which can have some uncertainties associated with it, but the object appears to be at about 13,000 feet. And important aspect of this here is that it’s sort of midway between the jet and the ocean. So it’s the ocean that looks like it’s right behind it is actually 4.2 miles away. And this is our first indication that some are Most of the motion that we observe the apparent motion of the object is, in fact, due to the rapid motion of the sensing platform, which is about 430 miles per hour in this case. But we don’t have to guess about this. So we have enough information on this display to actually reconstruct the encounter. Go to the next slide, please. And so this is what this is, this is using additional information on the screen, including the time axis. And so we know that this aircraft is backing about 15 degrees left, and you can compute through a simple calculator the radius, approximate radius of curvature of the flight. And you the bottom line is I won’t go into detail here. But if you can get the bearing and range to the target at two locations with known separation in time, you can figure out how far it moved. And in this case, Osijek moved about 390 meters in 22 seconds, and that corresponds to velocity of just 40 miles per hour. And so that’s the velocity is consistent with wind speeds at 13,000 feet. So it’s not our task to conjecture what this object is, but it’s an example that illustrates the type of data needed to determine critical parameters that will help us identify such objects going forward. In addition to the importance of quantitative analysis, this example also serves to illustrate the kinds of cognitive bias we have to contend with, for UAPs recording from unfamiliar perspectives. And Shawn Kirkpatrick showed another example of that this is this is a parallax effect case. Thank you. Any questions?

David Spergel  2:16:45

Thanks. Actually, before we have questions, actually a good moment. China wants to comment on his one of the questions, if we will bring Shawn up and then take questions for everybody, or more discussion.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  2:17:05

Thanks, that was that was actually very helpful for everyone, I’m sure. Just one piece of clarification on the video that we showed the second one that was the new, newly released one had the three aircraft in it. The question was asked about if it was a stabilized background against which the jitter was showing? I am not 100% certain of that answer, it might just be a bunch of dust on that sensor. But let me go back and get you a more fulsome answer. It is either stabilized background, or it’s just garbage. But in either event, the three aircraft are jittering, because of the platform, but that’s another example of exactly what you’re saying, right? It’s the perception of the of the operator who thinks it’s doing something else when it’s actually just your own camera.

Joshua Semeter  2:17:55

Shot in your event, it seems to me that what you mean by jitter, in this case is the plane is actually making motions that are causing a parallax. So it’s

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  2:18:03

actually more than that. So the plane will move, and that’ll cause the parallax that you just showed, but the sensor itself, the a lot of these cameras are in gimbals. For those of you not certain what a gimbal is, it’s the thing that your your cameras sit on your telescopes sit on it moves it around and different directions. Those can sometimes be stabilized, in which case they they damp out the motion of the platform. And in other cases they’re not. And they jump around. And so what you’re actually seeing in that video, is what we call jitter of the sensor against the platform. So the platform is moving, and the sensor is moving. It’s not a stabilized against the target. But the once it’s collected, sometimes in processing, the background has stabilized frame to frame just like some of those tick tock videos you see. Right. Same idea.

Warren Randolph  2:19:02

Yeah, just wanted to jump in here, I think, make a couple of comments. Just follow up on what Josh said and my experience of flying, you know, over 15,000 hours 30 something years in airplanes and both in space and the environment that we fly in space or you know, an atmospheric flight, very, very conducive to optical illusions. So I get why these pilots would look at that go fast video and think it was going really really fast. I remember one time I was flying in the warning areas off of Virginia Beach military operating area there. And my REO thought the guy that sits in the back of the Tomcat was convinced we flew by a UFO. So I didn’t see it. We turned around. We went to go look at it. It turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon you No, oftentimes in space, I would see things and I was like, Oh, that’s really not behaving like it should it’s not, it doesn’t have the trajectory of a satellite or a planet on the back of the star field. And every single time, when I would look at it long enough, I would realize that it was atmospheric lensing. It was the fact that what I was looking at was actually flying behind the atmosphere. And because of variations in the atmosphere, it made the trajectory look like it wasn’t going in a straight line, it was going like this, and they’d go like that. And it would turn in the other direction, always was always the case. My brother, Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, and also now a US senator, I was with him for dinner last night, he shared a story with me, again, that he had shared years ago, but I had kind of forgotten about it. And I think it’s worth sharing. And that is when he was the commander of STS 124, I think it was in 2008, they were getting ready to close the payload bay doors of the spaceship. And before they do that, you got to make sure nothing interferes with the doors. Because if the doors don’t close properly, the space shuttle can reenter the atmosphere, it would come apart, it’s part of the structural integrity of the vehicle. So they see something in the payload bay. And they thought it was a tool, maybe a bolt, they couldn’t quite figure it out, they were potentially going to have to go and do a spacewalk to retrieve it. But before they did that, my brother grabbed the camera, they took a picture of it. And when they blew up the picture, they realized that this is not a bolt or a tool in the payload bay, it was actually the International Space Station, that was 80 miles away. I mean, that’s just a really good example of how this environment we operate in is so so conducive topple optical illusions, oftentimes, guys fly into the water. And there are cases where, you know, pilots have rendezvous on a buoy, because they thought that was their wingman. It’s just very, very challenging environment to work in, especially at night. And in my experience, the sensors kind of have the same issues as the, you know, the People’s eyeballs.

Mike Gold  2:22:23

So per what Scott just said, I think we need to take it as an action to investigate an identified animated phenomena to go after Bart Simpson. I think what Josh is gotcha is very, very helpful and shows why we need multiple sources of data, where the radar hits, where there are other sightings. Unless we can look at this from a holistic perspective, it’s very difficult to draw conclusions. And relative to stigma, and I appreciate the reports that our colleagues gave. I think there’s plenty of stigma right here in this building. And I’m sure you’ve suffered from it at times. And I just want to commend administrator though, who’s always be Senator Nelson to me for his leadership, and candidly, courage and getting an asset to tackle this issue. And as we look at what Shawn had articulated that what he wants NASA to do, as we look at the recommendations for reporting and how we need to collate that reporting, I’m very concerned that this could be effectively done on an ad hoc basis. And I’ve been a part of far too many panels and studies that end up sitting on the shelf. I don’t want this to be one of those exercises. And we can discuss this further. But I would call for and recommend a permanent office within NASA to support this activity, I’ll be likely a modest one, what’s collate this information, collate that data, to archive the information and act as the open forward facing counterpart to Shawn and Aaro, I think then we could continue and actually accomplish the reporting, the stigma issues that have been raised, and we could do so in a relatively affordable fashion. Because again, I don’t want to all of our work to end up being in vain.

David Spergel  2:24:17

So now, Jen’s gonna turn to our charts. And and, you know, as panel would we were convened with a set of questions that we were charged to address, we’ve been addressing them through the topics we’ve talked about, and through things, as we’ve been thinking this through, but we’re going to organize the next part of the discussion with Jen presenting these things. And this is also a chance to get into some of the discussion phase. Because we can look at each of these questions as the topics that we make, we want to make sure we address as part of the report.

Jen Buss  2:24:58

Thanks, David, and I Want to thank the panelists all for all of your work? All of the knowledge that I’ve gained from from each of you through this time, I took it upon myself in preparing for today’s meeting to draft a statement that answers the eight questions that we were provided at the beginning of the last summer when the panel was created. So I’m going to read the question out loud. I’m going to read my statement. And I’m going to pause, let you think and reflect and if there’s remember, this isn’t all of the details associated with each of these answers, right? This is to be a kind of high level mixture. We’ve got the major points there. And this is an initial take for these answers. So the first question goes, what types of scientific data currently collected and archived by NASA or other civilian government entities should be synthesized and analyzed prior to potentially shed light on the nature and origins of UAP. So the panel reviewed data sources, analytic tools, data architectures from NASA, NOAA, FAA, commerce and others. The data that we recognize were not collected for the purpose of identifying UAP, which leaves bias in the data that was collected. Even though there is an immense amount of data available, it is hard to access and the sensors that were used were not well calibrated for identifying anomalous phenomena.

Jen Buss  2:26:46

No questions moving forward.

Jen Buss  2:26:48

Question number two kind of feel like Jeopardy. What what types of scientific data currently collected and held by nonprofits and companies should be synthesized and analyzed to potentially shed light on the nature and origins of UAP. Many organizations exist to track sightings of anomalous phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere, both nonprofit for profit, and otherwise, the study panel concluded that much of the inputs collected by these organizations are not considered scientific data in nature, and that they do not contain unbiased information. They’re not repeatable. And they typically come with eyewitness accounts, which we’ve heard even today, that there’s hesitations with using only eyewitness accounts to recognize or identify UAP. To the point about commercial or companies, there are a lot of space companies that some lobbied hard to get into present to us. They have troves of data, but they’re collected for a variety of different purposes, then the purpose of UAP. And those systems while they are well calibrated, are only one source of money that could be used. Questions, comments, concerns? Yes, Carla?

Karlin Toner  2:28:13

I’ll bite on that one. You know, I think your answer is correct as to what we’ve seen. But where I would go is if we made a recommendation to NASA that we’re really asking them to build a roadmap. And we haven’t done a robust cataloging, we looked at sources mentioned sources that we think might be relevant, but perhaps more robust effort, cataloging would be a good modest start.

Jen Buss  2:28:44

It’s good, I will only incite defensive trying to answer the exact question as opposed to the panel rather than trying to add recommendations at this point. But yes, point I’ll take it and thank you.

David Spergel  2:28:57

I mean, I think one of the data sets that we just learned about, you know, heard more about today, and thinking about so calibrating things is the FAA data on anomalous, you know, tracking events, right. And I think this is something where, if we had, you know, some imaging software people, you know, sell citizen scientists with cell phone cameras identify some event that looks interesting. One of the places you’d like to be able to turn is the FAA data. And having, you know, if there is to go back to, you know, having a NASA responsibility for data NASA makes because a lot of experience in serving as a clearinghouse for data from across the government for civilian data, right. It’s something we do in lots of different areas. And I think there are some opportunities with datasets there and I think the radar data is one that comes to mind as well. We don’t want to forget about isn’t available datasets. Yeah,

Jen Buss  2:29:58

absolutely. Question three, I think goes more towards the recommendations of what other types of scientific data should be collected by NASA to enhance the potential for developing an understanding of the nature and origins of UAP. So we’ve heard now from two of the panelists on some of the information that should be collected, or the way that some of that data should be organized in a manner to make it available for people to analyze that information. And the only other thoughts that I had here was, was really recognizing the difference in the sensor thresholds, right. So we can always tune a sensor all the way to the resolution that we might need or we might want. And as we collect that data to recognize for the scientists that are doing those analyses, the bounds of each of the systems that they’re that they’re using.

Paula Bontempi  2:31:00

Yeah. You know, what strikes me on that one? When you were reading, though? The answer, the proposed answer was, what may be new, maybe something that’s new to NASA in the sense of like, a time series so we can know what’s normal. So we can perhaps identify what’s not normal or anomalous, right? So I’m not sure to what extent it’s like the most unsexy thing to sell on the face of the planet, right is making consistent long term observations. But I think that the agency may be set up to do just that, for multiple reasons, right?

Jen Buss  2:31:40

Yeah. persistent

Federica Bianco  2:31:42

data collection, the agency does that in a lot of cases for us to physical purposes. So the infrastructure, of course, you know, pointing up and pointing at a different distance, but the infrastructure for collecting these kinds of data organizing and keeping it and that does exist, yeah.

Jen Buss  2:31:57

And there are, in their defense, a lot of satellite companies that are doing that persistent collection as well. Question for which scientific analysis techniques currently in production could be employed to assess the nature and origins of UAP, which types of analysis techniques should be developed? This is a two part with what exists today and what should be. So we’re looking also at recommendations. Based on the information provided by the presenters to the panel. There are very few credible analysis technique techniques available that currently exist to assess the nature and origins of UAV. The onset of artificial intelligence and automated analysis techniques give promise to being able to do that in the future.

Federica Bianco  2:32:54

I wanted to add something to that perhaps, which is that really to design the analysis, you need to know what the data looks like, right? So, you know, we can’t really say what kind of analysis should be created on the hypothetical data that we’re recommending should be collected in some, you know, somewhat specified fashion,

Jen Buss  2:33:14

if it’s all hypothetical, and we want to collect all of this data. And we know what format it’s going to be. And we can design analysis techniques around it.

Federica Bianco  2:33:21

And at that point, it’s likely that there are analysis techniques that are that already exist of anomaly detection work, we just don’t know which one will be more suitable, because the data as it should be, is doesn’t exist yet. Correct.

Jen Buss  2:33:35

She said exactly what I was gonna say, Yeah. And that’s what I was getting out with my point not that those analysis techniques don’t exist in the scientific community, just that they’re not being applied to this problem set right now. And it’s hard to apply them when we don’t have the known data of what would go into those. David?

David Spergel  2:33:53

Yeah, I think something we want to stress here is the importance of uniform data in the way it’s collected. Because particularly when you’re looking for outliers, if you have data coming from many different observing techniques, right, and just having a uniform set of cameras, a uniform set of detectors, so you understand the characterize them, right, because this is a needle in the haystack problem. And, you know, every camera to me, I’d mentioned in the opening session, ghosting and optics. Now, that’s going to be different in every different detector everyday. Right? And you. Before we get to the analysis techniques, we want to make sure we design the data collection, so that your analysis techniques can effectively be used on it. Right? If it can I

Walter Scott  2:34:41

take a slight issue with that, which is it sounds like you’re implying that you need a single way of collecting the data. I’d argue it’s really you need to understand the various ways in which you’re collecting the data and you’re able to cross calibrate across those different approaches. Because I seriously doubt that there is a single detector,

David Spergel  2:35:05

I think a handful of ways so that Yeah, well characterize things, things need to be well characterized to be useful, I guess, the way I would state it, and it takes time and energy to work out gross things. So that that’s, that’s, I think the challenge.

Anamaria Berea  2:35:22

So following up on both your points, I think it’s where we can actually apply artificial intelligence. So we cannot apply artificial intelligence on the current data. But we can apply artificial intelligence in a way that we can design characteristics for the data that we need, and how we can collect the data that we need. So

Mike Gold  2:35:44

this is probably more of a frustration than anything else. So I don’t know how helpful it will be. But I think we’re not looking for a needle in a haystack. We’re looking for anomaly in a haystack. We don’t even know that we’re looking for a needle, that it’s just a discolored piece of hay. I’m from Montana. So I love good hay analogy. I don’t know what the phenomenology is that we’re looking for. We say anomalous. Again, this question earlier, what does that mean? nominalist acceleration? Like, I think as we try to look at the data, we’re starting from an almost impossible position. When if we don’t know what we’re looking for, is it a radiation signature? Is that something electromagnetic is that something like that is why this is so challenging, and frustrating to me that we’re talking about monitoring something that we don’t even know what we’re supposed to monitor?

Jen Buss  2:36:33

Let me just offer Josh, before you jump in the scientific process of hypothesis driven research of that, while we don’t know all of the possible outcomes and the entire world, we can ask very specific questions, and go about it in a very scientific process to understand. So you’re right, we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. But we know hotspots, as we’ve seen from both FAA and aero, we do know some of those conditions that we might be looking for. So if you start with with kind of what you know, are places to start to go and look, and you start with the data that we have available to us, we might start being able to untangle the chicken and egg problem, you can what

Mike Gold  2:37:23

is the phenomena that we’re looking for?

Jen Buss  2:37:27

So we’ve heard them from Sean, I would pull up Shawn’s chart, but I can’t quickly do that. of the criteria that he said on the trends, I use word criteria, he said trends of six or seven phenomena, I guess, have specific size or within a specific motion range. And it’s something different than what we’ve seen before, something we don’t recognize. And so when you go to look for something that you don’t recognize it, it can be pretty easy. And that we’ve fooled ourselves today, and even watching some of these videos of what’s going on. But when you’re able to corroborate that with three or four other sources, it starts to make sense. Right? So something that looks like magic to the naked eye or to that camera, and that sensor isn’t once you understand all of the effects of what was going on in the surrounding environment.

Reggie Brothers  2:38:28

Got a question? Can we? Because it’s not gonna say frustration you do. Right? It’s regardless of what you’re looking for. If you don’t know what it is whether using AI or match filtering techniques, you can’t find it. Right, you can’t find it. So because the question I have is, can we use social media, that kind of thing as a way of cueing to know where something’s happening? Because we know Google searches can lead you to better understand where outbreaks happen, right? disease outbreaks, can use similar type of conflation of data to start saying, well, something’s going on here. Let’s start queuing sensors in that area that requires some real time capability. But is that something we can think about?

Federica Bianco  2:39:04

Can you object to that just a bit, you can find things that you don’t know how they look. Okay. There is a lot of the algorithms in anomaly detection are really based on let’s know, let’s find out how what we know looks like so that anything that doesn’t look like that can be identified and spotted. And then we can think whether or not we understand it, right. And so I think the point about the homogeneous detectors, really is about that we need to have a solid understanding of the normals that the anomalies with the outliers, as we sometimes perhaps more often call them in in science, right? Yeah,

Jen Buss  2:39:41

absolutely. I do want to be cautious of time. We were supposed to end this about 10 minutes ago.

David Spergel  2:39:48

Right. So this has drifted into discussion, but I think we’re doing discussion. So do you have any last topic you want to hit? If not, then we’ll just open up the general

Jen Buss  2:39:55

I have four more questions that we’re technically supposed to answer. All right.

David Spergel  2:40:00

Let’s do one. We can do four

Jen Buss  2:40:04

questions in two minutes. Right? Okay, why don’t you be drowned? In considering all of the factors above what basic physical constraints can be placed on the nature and origins of UAP? Mike, would you like to take this question? Got it? I, in my my notes to answer this knew that Shawn had presented some trends. So I used that kind of as the basis for what basic physical constraints could be available, and also the Josh’s presentation that he just presented of we know some of these are still in the realm of understanding. We just haven’t applied basic physics to understand what’s there. What we have. Question six, what civilian airspace data related to UAPs have been collected by government agencies, and are available for analysis to a inform efforts to better understand the nature and origins of UAPs and B determine the risk of UAPs to the national airspace. So we saw some of this in I’m going to use examples from today to kind of move quickly. Some of this in Mike Frese presentation, talking about the air risks, right that FAA is is always looking out for we know, by altitude and by sensor and curvature of the earth and line of sight. And as you get higher that you can see more, right, so we have a lot of civilian airspace data that can start to understand the nature and origins of the UAP. And determining the risk is based on how much you know, right? So you think about, I go straight to space, and I think about satellites and one tiny piece of space debris, you can destroy an entire satellite, because they’re moving really, really fast and in the vacuum of space. It’s not necessarily so true in airspace, right? But something that we don’t know could have a severe impact on pilots and their flight plan and all of that, which then could really wreak havoc on all of the United States airspace. And so being able to understand and identify what those are phenomena are, will help de risk the air flight safety in the national airspace. Question seven, what current reporting protocols and air traffic management data acquisition systems can be modified to acquire additional data on past and future UAPs? We’ve heard a lot of the reporting structures it was talked about earlier today. Those probably can be adapted and improved and it’s up to us and discussion as the panel on what those recommendations might be. Question eight and I’m get off stage what potential enhancements to the future air traffic management development efforts can be recommended to acquire data concerning future reported UAPs to assist in the effort to better understand the nature and origins of the UAPs. The potential enhancements, automatic filtering of the knowns has come up as a talking point. These are specific really to acquiring data, the tuning of those sensor platforms, the multimodal spectrum collection, and being able to kind of timestamp or geo stamp each of those to corroborate the sightings. So I will leave the panel with that with time to continue discussion.

David Spergel  2:43:55

Thank you. Great to be here

David Spergel  2:44:12

but before I open it up, I just wanted to restate Federica his answer to Mike for hay. If you know the properties of hay very well, and you can cat you go through your haystack and say I don’t know what this is. But it doesn’t look like hey, you don’t need to have a match filter looking for a needle in a haystack. If you know hey very well. Speak to Middle America now as a New York City resident my impression as we go through Hey, with your you don’t want to do it with your hands. But I defer to you on a choice today. I know Yeah, I think yeah. So I want to, in the final minutes we have here before the public session, look to the future. I think a lot of us have looked at the data we have now with a sense of dissatisfaction. And say, what data would you want? And how would you want to collect it? And just think about, you know, we don’t need to design the detectors. But think about the characterization, that we we’d like, what wavelengths we’d like. And, you know, just to kind of throw that out as one way to think about what we might want to recommend.

Paula Bontempi  2:45:46

So, one thing that strikes me in that question is that I’m not totally certain that we’ve dedicated our time and effort to looking for anomalies. I think, by default, there are some science communities that look for things like the genesis of a hurricane or a harmful algal bloom in the ocean or, you know, something in interstellar space. But I’m not sure we ever focused our interdisciplinary effort on that. And I think the question you ask is a really interesting one part of our statement of task, right, but I’m not sure I can answer that quite yet. That’s how I feel about that one.

David Spergel  2:46:26

Sure.

Shelley Wright  2:46:29

Surely, right. I’m going along with Dr. Bones happy point there. We heard a lot from AARO about specifics about the needle, one to four meters in size zero to Mach two, you can then look at NASA’s assets, right? And look at its spatial resolution, its spectral resolution, in particular, the frame rate to get I’m gonna get to your question here, Dr. Spergel. You can look at the current NASA assets and try to say which ones could find that needle, the ones that Dr. Kirkpatrick put forward? That analysis has not been done. So one of my recommendations would be for NASA to convene a group and a task force to look at its current assets to calculate what current available data current data, and current facilities could answer. Insight into that. Now to get to your future question. Looking at this, I see Walter is framerate, I see a really big issue with framerate. So if you want to catch fast moving objects, you need to take quick images. If you want to get to these very small sizes and resolution depending on altitude, where your actual you’re taking your image from ground or space, NASA will likely have to increase its framerate into its detectors.

Walter Scott  2:47:51

The short answer to what NASA’s current assets would be able to see would be really big haystacks that are moving very slowly, which I think is the point that you’re making. But that doesn’t mean that that data is not useful. Because if it’s able to characterize the background extremely well, that gives you a better idea of what unusual looks like basically, anything that you do that characterizes the background will contribute to an understanding.

David Spergel  2:48:21

So we’re gonna have to cut this off now because we’re now going to our our public session, public comment session. So turn that over.

Karen Fox  2:48:35

Hello, everybody. I am Karen Fox with NASA’s Office of Communications. And we are segwaying into the public q&a portion of this meeting. As a reminder, this is a faculty meeting that has a Federal Advisory Committee Act. And so we are under a guidance which says that these meetings are public, and that we take public questions. We got hundreds and hundreds of questions. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everybody who, who submitted them. We’re obviously not going to get to all of them today. But we are going to make attempts to answer some of them online, you can always check back to science.nasa.gov/uap. We’re over time, we will make it clear where we’re putting up some more of those answers. In the meantime, we did have to make some decisions. We stuck to questions that applied to this independent study and UAPs there were a lot of questions about astrobiology and other subjects that we’re not going to get to today. And also in an attempt to get to as many of the questions as possible since so many of them were similar. We’ve we’ve sort of bucketed them. And that is how we’re going to try to address as many as possible. So I’m going to toss the questions to you. And we’ll and we’ll look to getting some answers for our public questions. All right. So first set of questions are specifically about the data being used So, examples, what exactly are you incorporating into your report? What data are we using? What are some examples of data being used? Do we have multisensor data or have objects performing maneuvers that seem truly anomalous? Do we have photos videos? What about having the NASA historian go through the NASA’s historical records? Did you interview military or pilots for this study?

Karen Fox  2:50:24

So looking for some information about the kinds of data I can toss to anyone David looks like he’s dumping it?

David Spergel  2:50:32

Well, I think first and foremost, our goal here was really to create a roadmap. Right? So really, you know, we have been informed by some of the events that are reported and we’ve had. But we’ve certainly not done a complete historical study are in an archive. And I think one of the things we’ve wanted to do was, learn what kinds of events have been recorded, learn about some of the ones that didn’t resolve some of the ones that are unresolved, so we can best think about how in the future, we can collect data so that we can get more robust answers. So that I hope that it did address that question. It does. Others have anything else you’d like to add?

Karen Fox  2:51:19

All right. Well, I will keep going. Another big question category was about transparency, and about sharing information. And so examples in this category are, what is NASA hiding? And where are you hiding it? How much has been shared publicly? Has NASA ever cut the live NASA TV feed away from something? Has NASA released all UAP evidence it has ever received? What about NASA astronauts? Do they have an NDA or clearance that does not allow them to speak about UAP sightings? What are the science overlords hiding? Down events.

Dan Evans  2:52:02

All right, I’ll take a stab at that one, I really want to assure the public. And to double down on the remarks I made this morning that this agency is absolutely cast iron committed to openness and transparency, and honesty. And that commitment also extends to I live NASA TV feeds. They provide real time footage from our various missions. Now, to my knowledge, NASA has never intentionally cut a live feed to hide anything. And that includes you APS, of course, sometimes there are interruptions to our feeds. But that is simply because space is a complex place. There’s a vast array of natural phenomena, human made objects, and so forth. But again, I wanted to reassure the public that we’re absolutely committed to providing the public transparency and openness. Those are the hallmarks of NASA. That’s why we’re here today in public on TV, because we want the public to have the opportunity to see the process of this committee doing its work in public. It’s only right.

Warren Randolph  2:53:13

Just to follow up on what I what I said, I didn’t mean to be to joke about it. But in my 20 years at NASA, no one, either officially or unofficially, in my recollection, have ever discussed or briefed us or had any kind of discussions about anything that would be considered UAP, or UFO or anything like that.

2:53:37

And I’ll ask you to stand for one second and state your name. I’ll ask you to stand for one second and state your name just so everybody know who was speaking,

Warren Randolph  2:53:44

it’s hard to just following up on, on the question about if NASA astronauts ever signed an NDA, or anything of that, any thing like that, in my experience of being in the Astronaut Office for 20 years, there was never any formal or informal discussions at all about UAPs or UFOs, or anyone reporting anything that would suggest something from, you know, beyond our planet. Thank you very much. Yes, please,

David Grinspoon  2:54:21

just want to make a quick comment about the culture of science in relation to this question. Scientists by nature are at least intellectually sort of rebellious. It’s, it’s, it’s in our nature to question authority. You know, that’s how you’re a good scientist. You don’t just take someone’s word for it, you try to discover the truth. And for that reason, you know, this question about what are the science overlords hiding that’s sort of written in a facetious way, but I just want to emphasize that there’s no way that that all scientists could be in on, on on trying to hide something because it’s just not in our nature. Somebody told me to try to hide something as a scientist that would just increase my desire to, to, to Belay that order, and to release it. And I think that’s true of our community in general.

2:55:13

Alright, thank you so much. I’m gonna go on to our third set of questions. Which is, has NASA been tracking Earth’s atmosphere? Or are we also studying bodies of water for for UAP? I think that’s a damn question for NASA or? Yeah.

Paula Bontempi  2:55:32

Here’s the oceanographer.

Nadia Drake  2:55:35

So,

Paula Bontempi  2:55:36

you know, my understanding is this is a completely independent study to assess, you know, what assets, what data, what science, what observations, platforms, NASA has to potentially help evaluate and understand UAP, right. We have? Well, NASA has an Earth Science Division, and many scientists that many centers and many academics and other partners out there that study the Earth as a system. We do this from the unique vantage point of space, and the atmosphere is part of that. So I think Dr. Kirkpatrick stated this morning, that to his knowledge, and I think two hours there, there isn’t anything that’s been reported below the ocean surface. You know, and so I think part of what we’ve been talking about all day is, you know, what assets are out there to actually begin to identify data that could be useful in explaining any of these reports? If and should they come in? So I think that’s probably it, unless there’s something else to add.

2:56:53

All right, then thank you. Moving on to our fourth general bucket of questions. What are you doing to solve the stigmatization surrounding the study of UAP? Take that one. And state your name, if you wouldn’t mind. First.

Karlin Toner  2:57:12

One toner, FAA. I think the fact that NASA has called us together here as a panel to look into this, that NASA is hosting a public meeting that we’ve heard, right, it clearly stated, We’re here to be transparent. I think that’s the first step in trying to really normalize the study of UAPs. And I, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about the reporting about how to make it credible. And we talked also about UAP. In one of the earlier talks this morning, of the definition of the A whether it was aerial or anomalous, as the legislation now is, and really the distinction beyond UFOs. Right when we’re looking at UAPs. Here, we’re beyond just airplanes, we’re looking at all types of anomalous phenomena. And so that’s just a more inclusive term there.

Mike Gold  2:58:12

Still, Michael, just wanted to emphasize what Carlin said, which is so accurate, I really consider it quite amazing that we’re here having this discussion as the leadership service, great kudos for this. And beyond, I think a recommendation that I’d like to make is that NASA participate in symposia in panels sponsor research, when you have the NASA logo on that sponsored research on the discussion. It really helps normalize and push back against the stigma. I think NASA can leverage its excellent reputation, both domestically and abroad. To help push back on that stigma. I think it’s important to do so not just for science and discovery, but for national security, that we’ve all seen what’s occurred with balloons from rival nations. We don’t want this stigma to be a vulnerability that rival nations can take advantage of. Yes, Dan.

Dan Evans  2:59:03

Thanks, Karen, just a few additional points. From the agency perspective, we are of course, taking a set of actions to effectively normalize the study of UAP. So that involves collaborating across the government, encouraging an open dialogue and promoting rigorous scientific inquiry. Let me turn to each of those in turn. So in terms of promoting a rigorous scientific inquiry, the primary way we’re doing this is by being truly rigorous, and employing an evidence based methodology in everything that we do. That is characteristic of scientific research. It’s no accident that the people up on this stage are true experts in their reflect his respective fields. Okay. So that is, in turn going to help us to legitimize UAP studies, encouraging open dialogue, so by holding public meetings, so Just this one and having open conversations about findings, then we’re helping to normalize discussions again. And that that really goes arm in arm with our commitment to openness and transparency with the public. And then finally, in terms of collaborating across the government, we’re working very closely with other government agencies, not least Sean’s office AARO to broaden the scope, and the depth of our study. And I honestly believe that this collective interagency approach will lend credibility to the study of UAPs. And it’s going to demonstrate the seriousness with which we’re approaching this issue. Thanks.

Karen Fox  3:00:38

Well, that segues very nicely into what our next set of questions are, which is who we are working with. So the question is, who else is NASA currently working with? Or do we want to work with to study UAP? And is NASA working with international partners?

Jen Buss  3:01:02

I’ll take a stab at it as the questions tasked to this panel, so kindly asked us both in what other government agencies are collecting data, what data is available, NASA is partnering with them in many ways, as well as national, NASA has a wide commercial outreach, and partnerships with understanding what data is available, as well as Nash’s NASS is founded on not founded. But the core principles of NASA are with international partners. So the information that our partners are gathering is typically available to NASA as well. Yes, on all accounts,

Mike Gold  3:01:49

and I may just emphasize an ad that NASA is singular, I believe among government agencies, and its international outreach, again, not to keep talking about the Artemis chords. But you see, countries like Saudi Arabia, that we may not have a great relationship with as government right now. We have Saudi Arabia and Israel in the courts family so that NASA is unique in its scope and ability to reach out. I also think that we’re entering a new era of commercial space transportation, that is going from low Earth orbit out to cislunar space. And that is going to be the purview of the Department of Commerce, which is taking over space traffic management. So I think it’s very important that NASA work with and support commerce as we go through that transition department defense is currently responsible for that. And I think that will help us not only to identify potential UAPs, but to assist in preventing contention, congestion, and eventually conflict. And I also want to note in terms of space debris, debris in orbit right now, I believe represents an existential threat to our very society that we are getting very close to an event that could cause real problems for our ability to access satellites. And that’s what I think there’s great ancillary benefits to the conversation we’re having today that it was we increased our capability to monitor orbit for UAPs. That data could also be very relevant as we look at near Earth objects, and other threats. And again, it’s just end on your objects Apophis, for example. And asteroid is going to come so close to Earth, it will be below geosynchronous satellites. So any effort to begin to catalog and do better in terms of understanding that environment is going to be terrific. And I hope NASA works with commerce and international agencies, on Apophis and other missions.

Karen Fox  3:03:29

I think Federico had something to say to you, I

Federica Bianco  3:03:31

just wanted to add, you know, a lot of the things that we think we might recommend in terms of platforms to collect data that will be useful to study UAVs. You know, we recommend a multi platform and multi site that would also mean likely ground base as well as space based facilities. And this has been done already in astrophysics codes serving the sky, from the ground and from space with different methodologies in different different instruments to get a more comprehensive picture of what’s normal. And then that was an ominous, and about every 10 years, the scientific the astrophysics community in ways but many other branches, convened a panel of experts to see what things can be done to advance the field in the next decade. It’s called the decadal survey for us. And one of the recommendations this year was explicitly for agencies that do astrophysics to work together. So NSF, DOD and NASA to work together, share data share facilities and instruments. So I think this is, you know, there’s a lot of fields will benefit from this including the UAP studies. Absolutely,

Karlin Toner  3:04:44

everyone, toner, I’d like to put an exclamation point on how well NASA is collaborating across the government, I can from the FAA, and I can personally attest that FAA and NASA have a robust engagement in transferring research into practice in the ATM system. I think on the commercial space side, we work well with NASA. And all of our agencies are in the whole of government approach supporting AARO specifically on UAP topic. And and you know, it really comes down to good government and how we deliver because we can each work our own mission space, but to cover the whole space we need to collaborate together.

Dan Evans  3:05:27

And Dan, to put an exclamation point on Carlin’s exclamation point. So I think it’s important to say that, you know, we really do have a good relationship with the automated anomaly resolution office AARO, Sean’s office, and its previous predecessor organization, the UAP Task Force. And we have really benefited from very fruitful collaborations among those various entities. And quite frankly, as, as a taxpayer, one should expect nothing less than the government to be working effectively across different units together, it’s only right. That being said, it’s also important to acknowledge what NASA’s perspective is, in this study, and to acknowledge that the the Department of Defense Intelligence community have massively different equities about the study of UAP. And they have different interests. Ours is a purely scientific one. So you know, we collaborate, we consult, it’s a very good relationship. And I agree wholeheartedly with Carlin, but a whole of government approach is absolutely the right one to take.

Karen Fox  3:06:36

Great, thank you. I will move on to our sixth bucket of questions, which we had many on this topic. Is there evidence that UAP were created from non human intelligence? Yes, please.

Anamaria Berea  3:06:53

I will take this one. First and foremost, we are scientists, and we follow the scientific process. And I hope that the gathering here today showed a little bit of a glimpse on how the scientific process works. It’s not a question that you can answer very quickly with yes or no. And we follow the data, right? So as scientists, we follow the data, we formulate hypotheses, we test theories, we follow the scientific process, the role of this panel has been to create a roadmap and a framework for how all scientists that are interested in this phenomenon, can further study can further collect data can further formulate experiments, getting hypotheses can test different methods, maybe even innovate on the methodology side of things come up with new methods for how we can do basically science, but not just any kind of science, but the science of discovery and exploration, which is basically in the spirit of NASA. So just like Carl Sagan was saying Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We cannot make that kind of extraordinary claims at all, for any kind of big subjects in science, whether it’s UAPs, whether it’s bio signatures, whether it’s techno signatures, this question of whether we are alone in the universe is probably one of the largest questions that we’ve had in our history of science in our history of humanity. And it’s not one that we can take lightly. And that’s why we need so many scientists and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to work together and many organizations. So it’s a process. It’s a roadmap, and we work collectively on this. And we hope that within our lifetime, we will be able to answer this big question of whether we are alone or not. And also to better characterize this phenomenon, which is UAPs.

David Spergel  3:09:07

I want to sort of supplement that excellent answer by noting that we have not seen the extraordinary evidence, right. I mean, there’s a sense to give, you know, to make the claim that we see something that is evidence of, you know, non human intelligence, it would be it would require extraordinary evidence. And we have not seen that. I think that’s important to make clear.

Karen Fox  3:09:35

Alright, then I will move on to our seventh set of questions. We received many questions about the budget that is being dedicated to this. How large of a budget will NASA allocate how large of a budget is NASA allocating and how large of a budget will NASA allocate towards this the study of UAPs Dan?

Dan Evans  3:09:56

Yeah, that’s a dumb question. So there are two separate questions. In that, which is what is the budget for this group, this team? And what is the budget going forward? I think now, the budget for this independent study team is very consistent with any other of our external review groups that we bring in to the Science Mission Directorate on an annual basis. So you know, we have maybe 100 200 such groups entirely consistent with that. Also important to say, going forward now that NASA has not established a program relative to UAP. And as a result, there’s no associated programmatic funding. But this is how NASA works. Federal budgeting is a complex journey, of course. And the way NASA particularly NASA Science likes to work is we anticipate and wait recommendations from independent groups such as this one. And we need to wait on final recommendations, and then we’ll make an assessment. So too early to say. But of course, that’s all couched in the fact that federal budgeting is a very complex process, and we will always follow the Lord.

Karen Fox  3:11:03

Alright, we’re making good time. And we have one more question that that encompassed. Many of the ones we got, which is has NASA encountered any aliens or extraterrestrial life? What happens if the public comes across extraterrestrial life? What would NASA do if extraterrestrial life was discovered what the NASA study or do if extraterrestrial life was discovered? Now? I think it’s worth making the distinction that there when we talk about extraterrestrial life, we do have a study within NASA of astrobiology, which is not intelligent life, necessarily. And so I invite you, as you answer this question, to make clear the distinctions as you were talking, in terms of UAPs, as well as any astrobiology work that we do.

David Spergel  3:11:53

I would start by saying one of NASA’s big question is, Is there life out there? Right, and a lot of what NASA is doing, in its exploration of the solar system and beyond, is focused on searching for life in any form. Extraterrestrial, I think one of the things we have learned in the past 20 years is planets are common. We knew, of course, about the planets in our solar system. But we now know there are lots of planets out there. So there are a lot of potential environments for life. And I think one of the most fascinating questions is, do any of those planets host life. And that’s something that NASA is trying to address in a host of different ways. Whether it’s probes that are landing on planets, or designing missions that will look for signatures of life around other planets. So the search for life is a really important thing. We haven’t found life beyond Earth. Yeah. Right. I mean, let’s be clear about this. We haven’t found it yet. But we’re looking, and we’re looking for it and lots of different ways. And, you know, David was discussing techno signatures is one way that we can work both within our solar system and beyond. And there’s so there’s a lot, a lot of different elements, I think, of this potential search. And, you know, just to go back to something so that those phrase an earlier question, you know, is NASA hiding anything about this? No, this is actually what you know, answering this question is one of the things that NASA has and agencies is excited about. It’s what’s something that lots of scientists working with NASA are excited about is, is this question of? Is there life out there? You know, and I think one of the things that makes this question of Are we alone? Such a central question, not just to the scientific community, it’s a central question, I think, for the public. I suspect there are more people watching this than the typical episode of NASA. TV. Right. And this is something where we will have meet, you know, media coming to the press conference, because these questions touch on something that I think is really a deep question for humanity. is, are we alone in the universe?

David Grinspoon  3:14:37

Yeah, it just kind of echo what David said a bit. I mean, obviously, this is something we think a lot about in astrobiology, what, you know, what if we succeed, and, you know, we are very driven to try to find real evidence of extraterrestrial life, and we would be highly driven to share that If we found it, because everyone wants to show that they’ve been able to succeed in what they’re trying to do, and, you know, one, perhaps illustrative example is to think about what happened when we came close when NASA thought maybe they had discovered extraterrestrial life. And, and a big event, actually, in the history of astrobiology was in in the 1990s, when some scientists had thought that they had discovered fossils in a meteorite that came from Mars. And what happens is, you don’t announce it immediately, you make sure that you try to make sure you’re right, because you also don’t want to have false alarms and announce something where and then you go, oops, sorry, we were wrong. That was mistaken analysis. But what happened was when the when the scientists were sure they were right, then there was a big, in fact, presidential press conference with President Clinton and NASA. And it was a big public announcement. And that’s what would happen. If we discovered something we would try to make sure we were right. And then we would very proudly and loudly let the public know about it.

Karen Fox  3:16:06

Thanks. We’ve just one minute left. So I’ll let you finish up.

Paula Bontempi  3:16:09

Yeah, thank you. The only thing I wanted to add, I wouldn’t at all liken it to alien or extraterrestrial life. But in astrobiology and exobiology, you know, there is the exploration of our planet as an analogue for what might be found on other worlds. You know, and what, what is extreme cold was extreme heat, a volcano of black smoke are at the bottom of the ocean, what lives there and how is that even possible and things we still discover, throughout our ocean might look alien to a lot of people, right. And we keep discovering new species of different things, whether they be microbes or algae, or you know, charismatic megafauna, whatever they are. But there are synergies. I know there was an initiative years ago at NASA called oceans across the solar system. And the idea was, could our own Earth ocean be used in the life within it as an analog for what might be discovered elsewhere? So I think that’s an example of a potential synergy of interdisciplinary science, research observations, etc. collection of data and information gathering that could be useful in the future.

Karen Fox  3:17:21

Thank you so much, I will hand it back to David Spergel, your chair.

David Spergel  3:17:33

So let me also just answer the one other piece of that question was, what do you do if you see something surprising, right, where do you report and this is something we’re just to come back to something I mentioned, my opening remarks, the ARL is the our lead agency for UAPs. And while we’ve talked about orange, you know, life in this context, most UAPs, I think, and when one looks at the data, more detail, are going to turn out to be phenomenon we understand, we saw this with some of the balloons or our commercial jets, we saw those examples. Some UAPs. And we saw this with the Chinese balloon that flew over is something an issue sometimes of national security. So we actually do want to encourage people, just from that angle, to report it. So, you know, since just before it will transition to summary, but to answer that question, that, you know, to keep in mind that, you know, the AR O’s role is to be the prime source for understanding those things. And what our charges is to think about what’s NASA’s role, and I think NASA, and this is something, you know, will come, I want to now go back to discussion, we didn’t have that much time for it. To come back to, you know, what we eat what we see as NASA’s role in this. I think one real piece we’ve talked about is big. NASA can help remove the stigma, NASA can draw them more of the scientific community in. And I think what NASA can help do is provide standards of high data quality. I think one of the things that many of us who’ve come you know, not looked at this before I certainly put myself in this group was struck by the limited nature of the data that many events had insufficient data. And that in order to get a better understanding, we will need to have high quality data data will you understand its provenance data from multiple sensors and I think one of the things that, you know, even from the same sensor, as we saw, in Josh’s analysis, also even Sean’s showed us when you can observe event over time, and get velocity information, that gives you a lot of additional information. So we’re gonna want things with high frame rate. We’re gonna want things from Oct perspectives. And so I think those are all going to be pieces of things that we want to think about. I think this is an opportunity for citizen science. I think if we can come up with recommendations in our roadmap that point to ways in which we can collect it, people can collect data, I remain a big fan of these things, they do take over our lives too much, but they are fabulous data collectors have. And I don’t know, there’s something like three, 4 billion or them that are on the planet. And NASA, I think, has the prestige and visibility to develop an app or work with companies to develop apps that could collect data in a uniform and centralized way that I think will, you know, most of the stuff that’s collected, is going to turn out to be commercial planes, balloons, when you have multiple cameras, you can eliminate some of the optical limitations of the ghosting and those effects. Some of them will almost certainly be novel physical phenomenon. Alright, I think it is. We have learned a lot about our planet and how the universe works. There’s a lot we don’t know, I think yeah, you know, as a scientist, what is the most exciting thing is the surprises. And I think that there are things that continue to surprise us about our own planet, there’s phenomenon or atmosphere, the atmosphere that we probably haven’t seen yet, or perhaps we’ve seen and not noticed yet. Right. And there’s, I think, a long history in science, when you look back, and you realize that this discovery had a pre discovery that people had seen something before. And we’re missing it. And those pre discoveries were not of note, because often because we had biases against seeing it, but it wasn’t because there was limitations in data quality. And, you know, one of the things I was taught is, when you have a question you don’t know how to answer, you start by getting better data. And, you know, I will come in, you know, I got to do the summary. And as the Chair, I get to, you know, summarize a conclusion. We need better data would be my my take away, and we need more uniform data. And since I’m so proud of my haystack, we need to be able to understand what’s in the haystack. And it’s a lot more complicated than a haystack, in a sense, right. As you know, it’s got commercial planes, it’s got, you know, drones. And, you know, I think the number of drones out there is large and growing, and will be a continuous source of confusion. We were charged to think about air safety, you know, understanding and characterize and seeing what’s going on with drones is also I think, going to be an important air safety issue. So we’ll need to, you know, to understand the unknown, or start to study the unknown. Another important piece is always going to be characterizing the known really well. And, you know, this is the part I think of a lot of science that seems dry and boring. But it’s calibration and understanding the events you expect to see. You know, in thinking about this area, one of the groups of people that people talk to her particle physicists doing experiments at CERN, where they go through the effort of finding extremely rare events, define new particles. And in order to do that, you need to understand the standard predictions well, so I think another part of the whole stuff worry. And I know this is something a row is working hard on in the context of military is like, you’ve got to characterize what the known things are. You know, when you’ve got that F 35, flying past a balloon, what does it see? What does it see at sunset? What does it see at all observing angles, and that characterizing the normal is an essential thing to do to understand what’s out there. So let me conclude the session by thanking the panelists. It’s been a pleasure learning from you, thanking Shawn and other invited speakers that we’ve had we’ve had for some of our data collection sessions, we’ve learned a tremendous amount from you. And also thank the public for their engagement. I think we were all impressed by the the number and level and sophistication of the questions people sent in. We try to address as many as that we could in the session, as you heard NASA, through science.nasa.gov will provide there’ll be some additional answers provided encourage you to go there. Actually, as a non NASA employee, I’ll put in a little ad for science.nasa.gov. NASA does amazing things. And we’re learning amazing things about the universe and our planet. And just encourage you to go there and continue to learn and continue to explore. So thank you.

The post NASA’s Public UAP Meeting Held May 31, 2023 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The transcript was created by The Black Vault with the help/assistance of AI. Then, manually, the names were matched up with the speakers, and a rough pass over the transcript was done, but it is far from perfect. However, the intent is to have some kind of a guide to the meeting that can be searched. For any corrections, feel free to CONTACT with changes.

Transcript

Karen Fox  00:12

Oh, everybody and welcome to this a media telecon after our independent study on UAP, that’s an identified anomalous phenomena. We hope you weren’t. If you’re here for the media that you had the opportunity to watch the public broadcast today, we will have a link for that up shortly, you can go back and look at it. We will be focusing today mostly on q&a. We’re not going back over all the things we discussed today. So we will be leaving the most time we can for immediate ask questions. I am Karen Fox, with NASA’s Office of Communications. And we will start with just a couple of minutes of introductory remarks. And then we will go quickly into the q&a, a warning for you. If you did not have the opportunity to watch the broadcast. today. We have many people here today, we’re going to try very hard to be good about making sure each person says their name ahead of time, you should feel free to write us in the opposite communications. If for some reason you missed the name, but we will do our best to get you all the names as we go. Once we do questions, you will be invited to press star one to get in the queue. To ask a question. Without further ado, I will toss to two of our panelists, Dan Evans and David Spergel. Each one is going to give just a couple of minutes overview of what this independent study is about and what we’ve accomplished today. And then we’ll move right into our q&a portion.

Dan Evans  01:51

Thanks very much, Karen. So something I mentioned this morning, but I’d like to re iterate this afternoon is that this subject of on identify anomalous phenomena UAPs, if you will, has truly captured the attention of the public of the scientific community. And nowadays, the US government as well. And we at NASA strongly believe that it’s our responsibility, all working together to investigate these occurrences, and to provide the sort of rigorous scientific scrutiny that NASA is well known for our boss, the NASA administrator, Senator Bill Nelson, truly believes that studying UAPs is incredibly important, not least because it provides an opportunity for us to expand our understanding of the world around us. And given NASA’s roots in exploration. As I said, this morning, this work is in our DNA. Secondly, we are approaching this study, highly cognizant of the fact that there is a situational awareness aspect. The presence of UAPs undoubtedly raises concerns about the safety of our skies. And it’s our responsibility, again, working together to investigate whether those anomalies, those phenomenas pose any risks to SP safety. What we’re doing now is we have brought together this team of 16 experts, all of whom are absolutely top notch experts in their respective fields, and pull them together in a highly interdisciplinary approach. We’ve tasked them with helping NASA produce a roadmap, a roadmap that doesn’t necessarily look back at previous grainy footage sort of acknowledges that many UAPs historically, we’ll never be able to get to the bottom of because the data are of such poor quality. So we’re trying to assess whether those phenomena pose any risks to SB safety. And we’re doing it using science. NASA believes that the tools of science apply to the study of UAP because they allow us to separate fact from fiction. And that’s all part of NASA’s commitment to exploring the unknown. And doing so with the openness, transparency and candor that were well accustomed to providing the public. I’ll pass it over to David.

David Spergel  04:35

Thanks, Dan. So as Dan noted, our goal here is to provide a roadmap for how NASA can contribute to understanding and in doing so, you know, mindful of the AR O’s role as leading the whole of government UAP effort. But NASA has some really unique capabilities. It is the civilian agency and as its data is open It handles things in a transparent manner. And as such, I think is the best suited to interact with both the citizen scientists and scientists, professional scientists engage with us. We’ve gone through a data collection stage, which is continued with the our hearing today. And I think what we’ve seen is that many events have conventional explanations. We saw more of this today that many of these events are commercial aircraft, civilian and military drones, whether in research balloons, military equipment, weather phenomena ionospheric phenomenon. That said, we there are remain events that we do not understand. But these events tend to be characterized by poor quality and limited data. And I think one of the lessons we’ve drawn is the need for more high quality data and data that is, well caliber measured with well calibrated instruments, multiple observations, and that there’s a need for high quality data curation. In order to assess these events. Where we have not yet made our recommendations, we’re still at the stage of developing our report. So we just were everything we say now represents really preliminary observations, our report will be out, we hope by the end of July. And that report will be fully open. And you know, it’s really only at that stage that we can, we will have consensus recommendations that we will be presenting to NASA. And these will be a report that we will send through the Earth Science Advisory Board, which will pass it on to NASA Headquarters.

Karen Fox  07:06

All right. Thank you so much. As I mentioned, we will move on to the q&a portion of this.

Operator  07:14

And to ask a question, please press star one,

Karen Fox  07:18

star one. And I’ll remind our panelists to say your name first when you when you answer. And our first question is going to be from Steve Crabtree of BBC, please.

Steve Crabtree  07:32

Hello, can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. Fantastic. I should start just by saying, Dan can tell from your accent that you’re from the UK. So I began my career at the BBC on Tomorrow’s World. I currently look after the sky at night, and I was the editor of horizon for five years. So the chances are, you probably appeared in one of my programs. And David Speigel. David, I did a presentation for the Simons foundation last year about science and science fiction, which my friend is a modern who organized. My question is very television law, I’m afraid. But it’s very straightforward, which is, I’m just very curious as to whether you’ve discussed what to do, if you actually do discover that UAPs are extraterrestrial, because that would suggest an advanced technology. And we know clearly what what happens certainly on the earth when a when an advanced civilization meets a less advanced civilization. So I’m just curious as to whether that has been discussed as a group with everyone on the panel that has done this brilliant presentation this afternoon.

David Spergel  08:46

That was actually not I mean, that’s a fascinating question. I think one or probably many of us have speculated about, but not one that was in our charge.

Karen Fox  08:56

So that was David Spergel speaking and we’re gonna go to David Grinspoon, next.

David Grinspoon  09:01

Oh, yeah, again, as as David mentioned, this is David Grinspoon. It’s not something we’ve spent time thinking about too much as a panel, because it’s not really in our in our remit. But you know, in the astrobiology community, I can tell you that, of course, it comes up a lot. What happens if we’re successful and even more specifically, not just with finding extraterrestrial life, but what happens if SETI detects a signal or we otherwise get what seems like convincing evidence of you know, that we aren’t alone in the universe. And there’s pretty much complete consensus in that community that that what we do is share that knowledge with the world that any any concern that we as scientists might have about the repercussions of that and you know, we could have some longer discussion about what we think that may be, but that’s sort of not not our job. Our job is to investigate Get the universe and share what we find. And so I think you will find that that would be the attitude in the scientific community is just to, to share what we find.

Karen Fox  10:12

Great, thank you so much. Moving on to our second question, which is from Marcia Dunn of the AP.

Marcia Dunn  10:20

Yes. Hi, can you hear me?

Karen Fox  10:22

Yes, you can.

Marcia Dunn  10:23

Okay.I’m struck by Michael’s comment that there’s probably plenty of stigma surrounding the topic right there at NASA headquarters. And given that, how hard was it, to kick off this study by NASA? And how hard was it to get sick and 16 open minded people to serve on the panel? Also, considering that they’ve been bombarded with online attacks? And also, why not just call these UFOs? Why UAPs? And furthermore, why switch the A from aerial to anomalous? Because that makes it even a bigger mouthful to say? Thanks.

Dan Evans  10:58

Alright, so lots of questions. How do we start, this started with the NASA administrator, Senator Bill Nelson, wanting to better understand UFOs. And that, in large part is based on the considerable work that he did when he was in the US Senate. But and I wanted to actually pay a major credit to Senator Nelson for, for doing this, because this has not historically been in NASA’s remit. And so it’s very rewarding that he has the confidence in NASA science, to take a scientific look in this because the administrator believes, as do we, that the tools of science apply here also. Now, how do you go about assembling a team of experts to come and do this task. And, again, I wanted to pay tribute to this incredible group that I’m proud to sit on the stage with right now. This is a complex task. We recognize that there is a need for expertise in multiple scientific disciplines. So we sought out recognized authorities in their respective fields, who could approach this investigation from diverse perspectives. And yes, given the sensitivity, and the stigma associated with the topic, it is important to find individuals who are willing to participate in this endeavor and I can tell you that we have nobody turn us down. Everybody on stage is our first choice because they collectively bring an incredible diversity of expertise to this task, and then combined, that diversity leads us to truly, I think, profound places. Let me address another question. And forgive me if I didn’t get to every single one of your sub questions. The term UAP originally, unidentified aerial phenomena was changed by the National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December 2022, I believe, to identify anomalous phenomena and that was principally in recognition of the fact that one should expand our search beyond just airspace to potentially include near space, and undersea phenomena as well and consistent with that law than NASA accordingly changed our our charge to encompass multiple domains. Why don’t we call it UFOs? I think because of the stigma associated with UFOs. This is a serious business. I think many experts have told us about the potential risks to us airspace safety. And I think also because we want to employ the rigorous scientific method that NASA is accustomed to providing, I think it’s actually good practice to to call these events UAPs, not UFOs.

14:33

Then I could be mistaken, but I thought it was actually in the Defense Authorization Act of 2022 is where this study was requested. Not it was not.

Dan Evans  14:47

The NDAA Scott actually authorized the establishment of the or domain anomaly resolution office AARO in the NDAA that was signed in for 21 I believe If 22 Exactly 22, excuse me, all right, and is Senator Nelson and Astrid ministry to the directors of this study take place for NASA.

Karen Fox  15:12

And for those online, that was Scott Kelly, who was responding to Dan.

Karen Fox  15:20

All right, moving on to our next question. Gina Sunseri. With ABC News.

Gina Sunseri  15:27

Yes. Questions for Dr. Drake, if she’s available,

Gina Sunseri  15:31

will you talk about the roadmap to this?

Gina Sunseri  15:34

But what would the roadblocks beat that roadmap?

Gina Sunseri  15:37

What are the hurdles that need to be overcome?

Nadia Drake  15:44

Hi Gina,

Nadia Drake  15:45

thank you for the question. This is Nadia,

Nadia Drake  15:47

I think I’m actually going to toss that one over to Dr. Spergel,

Nadia Drake  15:50

our chair to address what the possible roadblocks could be.

David Spergel  15:57

I mean, I think there’s a lot of different kinds of robots. I mean, a lot of them are so I feel in addressing this issue. We steer between the rocks and the cyclone, we have a community of people who are completely convinced of the existence of UFOs. And we have a community of people who think addressing this question is ridiculous. Because you have Oh, students, you know, everything can be explained. And so to me, that’s the greatest roadblock we we want faces here. And I think as scientists, the way to approach questions is you start by saying, We don’t know. And then you collect data, and you try to calibrate your data well, and to go to an analogy we talked about earlier. The first step, if you want to find needles in haystacks or don’t even know to look, what you’re looking for, is you want to learn and characterize the haystack really well. And if you understand a well and how you measure and observe a well, you can find things. But that’s that’s not an approach that we have a community, I think the biggest challenge is you have community out there that says that haystack is filled with gold, and another community saying it’s not to look in a haystack for anything interesting. There’s nothing there. So I think to me, that’s the greatest challenge in this area. That’s right. Josh Smith

Karen Fox  18:00

matter. All right, I’m gonna move on to the next question, which is Bill Harwood with CBS News.

Bill Harwood  18:10

Thank you very much. This is for anyone really, but when you say there are events that, you know, after you’ve ruled out things that are obvious that there are some events that simply can’t be understand, understood at this point? What does that actually mean? And what I’m asking you is, is that more a case of the data that you have either due to quality, the age of it subjective accounts, whatever, that the data just isn’t good enough to reach a conclusion? Or does it mean the data might be good, but what you’re seeing is something that cannot be understood in terms of known technology? Or is it both?

Karen Fox  18:43

Alright, Federica, Bianco Hi.

Frederica Bianco  18:46

So I think you actually hit the nail in the head. The data that we have seen is generally sparse, poor, difficult to analyze. And in the cases in which it’s best, we can determine the nature of the things that look weird, even if they look clear by you know, re measuring them or accurately and accurately finding out that they don’t move so fast, after all, and so on. There are many cases in which we might be under the impression that there might be something anomalous that the data is not provisioned to support an analysis that would allow us to really understand either the shape or the behavior in motion, or the relativity property of the object. So it just cannot be said with the current data. It’s very possible that with better data that will be reconciled with a known phenomenon.

Karen Fox  19:42

All right. Moving on to our next question, we have Marina Koren from the Atlantic.

Marina Koren  19:50

Hi, thank you. I have two questions. The first is for any panelists who would like to take it? Can you tell us more about the online harassment that you receive? Were you surprised to get such harassment? And then a question for either David Spergel, or David Grinspoon, or both David’s you said near the end of today’s meeting that scientists are looking for life beyond Earth? Actively, obviously, and you mentioned techno signatures as one way that you’re doing that. You both also said that NASA should help remove the stigma around UAP. So do you think that NASA should consider the study and analysis of UAP as a way of looking for evidence of life beyond Earth? Thank you.

Karen Fox  20:34

Great, really start with Dan Evans.

Dan Evans  20:36

Okay, so I’m going to address the first question, which was surrounding online harassment as the panelists. And although I won’t get into specifics, I will point out that if you were watching the NASA YouTube feed this afternoon, and looking at the live chat that’s on the side of that panel, then you can sort of see some of the the online trolling. That just is, that’s really the tip of the iceberg. I think the important point is actually this, that if we are truly to approach UAP, with an unwavering commitment, and dedication to the scientific process, then harassment of any nature only serves to detract from that process. And of course, we see this not just in in UAP, but in other fields of science, as well. I will underscore something that I said earlier today is that every single member of our team is a respected authority in their field. They have NASA’s complete and total support. And this is hard work. It’s serious work. And if we are truly to respect the sanctity of the scientific process, that we allow, need to allow science, indeed, to be free, and that freedom stems directly from an absence of harassment to this incredible team of panelists.

Karen Fox  22:14

All right, and really, the second question was to either David Spergel, or David Grinspoon. Yeah,

David Grinspoon  22:21

this is David Grinspoon, it’s an interesting question, because, you know, as I indicated in my talk, during the panel, there is conceptually a connection, perhaps, between astrobiology and SETI and the study of UAPs. In that, you know, it’s a big universe. And we have to admit that there are things out there, we don’t understand. And in fact, in some of those, not well understood or not, not understood, phenomenon may be really important clues to, you know, things like two important mysteries that we want to understand. If you were giving me a finite pot of resources, right now to look for bio signatures and techno signatures, would I put some of that those resources into studying UAPs? Personally, probably not. Because, as we said, we haven’t seen any evidence that indicates that UAPs have anything to do with extraterrestrial phenomena. So so to me, it’s much more straightforward as as a application of our curiosity about extraterrestrial life to look at exoplanets to look elsewhere in the solar system. So I don’t, we don’t have reason yet to explicitly explicitly connect UAPs. With that study in that way, however, as long as there’s a mystery, bait on Earth, or wherever we have to pursue it. And if the data leads us to, to realize that it does have something to do with extraterrestrial life, of course, we’ll be enthralled and fascinated by that and will want to pursue it. But at this point, we don’t really have any explicit data that suggests to us that there’s a connection between UAPs and extraterrestrial life.

Karen Fox  24:13

Thank you so much. Moving on to the next question, which is from Jeff Brumfield of NPR.

Jeff Brumfield  24:20

Oh, Hi, there. I am sorry, to kind of belabor Marina question, but actually, the online chat for the livestream was close to at least on YouTube. So I was wondering if you could just be I’m not asking for names just a little more explicit about the type of harassment isn’t harassment you’re receiving from people who believe aliens are real or people who believe this is a ridiculous question or both sort of gay back to David’s burgles rock and hard place point.

Karen Fox  24:51

So just before I pass that question off, I would like to point out that there were in fact, two YouTube videos going live today. One has had all of that. And we will be sharing, you know, there will be a permanent version going up. So you’ll be able to watch watch. But I do think it is one of the best places to see an example. Because we’re, of course, in a position where, you know, based on privacy and security reasons, we’re not able to give examples.

Jeff Brumfield  25:16

No, no, just a general sense of where this, which can be, you know, you don’t have to point fingers just more of a general sense of what’s going on.

Karen Fox  25:24

Right, Dan Evans will give a response.

Dan Evans  25:27

I think every one of the 16 Strong panel, plus myself receives on a on a daily basis, emails of all sorts concerning this subject, but we’re not talking about that we’re talking about specific attacks on the character of individuals and their suitability to sit on this panel. And again, that’s really just scratching the surface. I’ll go back to the remark I made previously that if we are to follow science, which is exactly what the American public expects of this agency, then science needs to be free to conduct its process. And I think Paul has got a follow up.

Paula Bontempi  26:19

Yeah. This is Paula Bontempi. I just wanted to add to that. Two things. First, you know, the, when the panel was announced, I’m an oceanographer by trade, and I’m the dean of a Graduate School of oceanography. And I had a lot of people asking what possible role an oceanographer could play on this panel. And I’m, you know, I’m a satellite oceanographer. I’m also an optical oceanographer. And so one of the points I think the panel has repeatedly made today is about how, when you blend multiple communities that do and utilize different observations and data and analyses, for their science together, we tend to really break boundaries and push new frontiers in discovery. And that is exactly what NASA is about. And I would add one thing to it, and I would not call it harassment. But one of the really interesting accounts that we did get first person was by somebody who was a pilot who had witnessed an anomalous event and reported it. And the one thing that that person said was how many people would contact that person and just want to give their account of what they had experienced? This goes to the stigma of reporting, these were people that had a story to tell and didn’t know where to tell it or didn’t feel safe telling it. And I think the other thing we’ve covered today is how to go about D stigmatizing reporting. Right? That also gives us more data with which to address understanding, reported events. So I think it all goes hand in hand.

Karen Fox  28:10

Thanks so much. Our next question is from Joey Roulette with Reuters.

Joey Roulette  28:17

Thanks. I don’t know who is best to answer this question. But

Joey Roulette  28:21

it’s about I guess, the overcoming the issue of the low calibrated data. Do you? Does this panel expect to recommend that a satellite or any kind of other sensor system should be dedicated to spotting UAPs? Or UFOs?

Joey Roulette  28:35

What would that look like? Exactly? And

Joey Roulette  28:38

also UAP now encompasses near space, was space part of the study? Are any of your findings? And if not, why did that not, you know, produce any kind of data

Joey Roulette  28:50

that was discussed today? Sorry, I

Joey Roulette  28:51

missed something on that front. But yeah.

David Spergel  28:54

So I don’t think we will this David Spergel. You know, while we haven’t reached our conclusions, yet, I do not think we’d be recommending a dedicated satellite. Satellites cover a relatively small, you have a trade off with a satellite, you can either cover a lot of the planet at very low resolution, far too low to yield anything interesting here or you can cover only a very small portion of the planet. So I think a dedicated satellite would not be very effective approach. We have been discussing ways in which you can engage citizen scientists engage the public in ways in which they could help collect data take advantage of an interest that will require well calibrated instruments. You know, I think we will be thinking through potential recommendations in that area. And you know, and see where we go from there, but I do not see just the limitations of a on how many pixels you have on a satellite, it’s a big planet, to cover at the resolution that you would need to continuously look for for events.

Karen Fox  30:13

Thank you very much. Our next question is from Shane Harris with the Washington Post.

Shane Harris  30:20

Hey, there, thanks for doing this related questions regarding the data that you had access to? Did you have access to military or intelligence agency data, including things like radar tracking information? And did the panel have any access to classified information sources? And if the answer is no to any of those, would that kind of information be more helpful in reaching more definitive conclusions?

David Spergel  30:47

The answer is no. This is an unclassified panel, we didn’t have that. role would, you know, I think background noise there was really more to provide a roadmap to NASA on how we can contribute. The Aaro is charged with being the lead CNS, they have access to the classified data, have issued regular reports on this and plan to issue additional reports, it’s really their responsibility to look through the classified data. I hope that was clear. We had a lot of background noise. Yep, that’s clear. Thanks

Karen Fox  31:31

And Dan Evans wanted to weigh in as well. Yeah, thanks.

Dan Evans  31:34

So just on score a few things that David said the focus our focus on unclassified data. It’s a strategic choice. And it’s meant to prioritize transparency and public engagement. And by working with unclassified data uniquely, we at NASA can share our findings and methods with the public and the scientific community. And that’s important because it allows open discussion, independent verification of the results. And of course, those are key principles in scientific research. Not only that the use of classified data allows for wider collaboration, not just within the US government, but also with our international partners, our our academia, partners, and of course, private industry, it’s important to note that the use of classified data doesn’t necessarily preclude collaboration with agencies that handle classified information, such as the automated anomaly resolution office. And yeah, such collaboration can occur as appropriate and necessary. But really, the focus of this work is on unclassified.

David Spergel  32:36

So this is David’s for let me just add something on classification, which is most data is classified. That’s how it’s taken, not what’s in the image. You know, if an F 35 takes a picture of a bird, it’s classified with military intelligence satellite, satellite takes an image of a balloon from space, it’s classified. So, you know, in many cases around these events, the classification is done not to, to hide the nature of the event, but in order to protect our our technical capabilities for for studying and assessing threats from potential adversaries.

Karen Fox  33:25

Thank you so much. Our next question is from Tim Fernholz with quartz.

Tim Fernholz  33:33

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us about this and for holding the public meeting, just to maybe get you to talk a little bit more about what you might predict. Obviously, you mentioned you’re not interested in the NASA satellite for this. But based on the findings so far, is there any thought that NASA should have a program or program office dedicated towards thinking about UAPs in their research?

Mike Gold  33:59

So as I might go, look best on radio. As we mentioned previously, during the panel, I’ve been part of far too many Blue Ribbon studies and groups have produced reports that have just laid on the shelf. I think we have an inflection point opportunity here to the leadership that administrator Nelson has shown to institutionalize this and be able to tackle the issues that we’ve laid out in a comprehensive in serious fashion. And I think that requires a permanent office at NASA to effectively deal with the issues that we’ve laid out. None of the topics or challenges here can be dealt with quickly. And it really requires a permanent solution. And I think that could be implemented for a modest financial costs. So that’s certainly something at least I personally, will be pushing and recommending that we proceed with if you don’t To visualize something at NASA, the fear is it can go way far too quickly.

Karen Fox  35:07

Thank you so much. Our next question Oh, wait, I take it back then of influence the way into

Dan Evans  35:13

budget land. The very fact, of course, that we’re standing up this team and doing it in an extremely public setting, you know that, that tells you that NASA takes this issue seriously. But it’s also true to say that the funding going forward is going to be determined within the larger context of NASA’s overall budget. That is, of course annually by Congress. And the specifics are going to differ depend on a variety of factors. That includes the extent of the work required resources and an alignment of the UAP study with NASA’s overall mission and goals. As you know, of course, our budget is publicly available. Any allocation for this agency would make regarding UAP will be transparent, subject to public and congressional scrutiny as well it should be.

Karen Fox  36:09

Alright, now we’re moving on to the next question, which is from Brett Tingley with space.com.

Brett Tingley  36:17

Hello, thank you all for doing this. Given that the concepts of replicability and reproducibility are so fundamental to the scientific method, to what extent can such an unpredictable and ephemeral phenomenon such as UAP truly fit into a scientific framework, given we can’t predict when or where UAP will appear, and that there’s such a severe lack of data as outlined in the panel before

Karen Fox  36:43

going to David Spergel for that, and then to Federica Bianco.

David Spergel  36:46

So this is one where in the discussions I, earlier on I talked about Fast radio bursts. This is something we’re actually used to in astronomy, some of the most interesting things are bursts that go off at unpredictable times, and unpredictable locations. And history of Fast Radio versus here, I think, are instructive. And that when they were first seen, they would doubt it, people weren’t sure they were there. Turned out that a class of Fast Radio Bursts turned out to be associated with microwave ovens that were where the doors were open before they were turned off. That produced a distinctive signal that was identified. But ultimately, the Fast Radio Bursts turned out to be a exciting cosmological phenomenon. One who’s discoverers just won the Shaw Prize yesterday. So that kind of shows, sometimes, you know, that very much wasn’t an anomaly. Sometimes anomalies are really interesting, and point to novel physical phenomenon. And I think there’s a number of interesting lessons learned there. When you know, initially, you often find things that are intriguing, you have to study their nature, sometimes they will turn out to have conventional explanations. But ultimately, in order to really detect and study or not, you know, anomalous events that are unpredictable, you have to decide figure out ways in which you can do dedicated observations and optimize your observational strategy to be able to do that. And I think that’s, as we think about UAPs, I think we’re informed by previous successes in identifying anomalies.

Karen Fox  38:53

Federico Bianca was gonna go, but I think she feels that I think David David covered it. Fantastic. We’ll move on to our next question, which is from Brandi Vincent, of defense.

Brandi Vincent  39:08

Thank you. And thank you all so much for doing this today. First, and I’m sorry if I missed this one. But who is the new NASA Science Advisor that’s embedding in AARO? And is someone from DOD and betting at NASA? Tell me a little bit more about sort of what to expect and your thinking there. And then separately, you’ve confirmed that unclassified data isn’t being used for NASA’s current studies by these outside experts. What’s your response to criticism that if NASA is not using classified MASINT or SIGINT data held by NGA, DIA and other DoD archives, that maybe it’s not getting a full and accurate assessment for the public?

Dan Evans  39:53

Okay, so I can respond to those. This is Dan Evans again. Yes, so we are shortly to send over a liaison officer to the Department of Defense, their or domain anomaly resolution office. This is Mark McInerney. He’s sitting in the audience. He is a tremendous expert on large scale curation of data. He is an employee of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. And he really runs the show when it comes to our Earth Observing assets. All that being said, I want to underscore again, that NASA’s interests in UAP do differ from the Pentagon, and from the intelligence community, we are adopting a science focus here. And it’s good because we believe that science has a seat at the table. Individuals such as Mark can translate into both domains between unclassified and classified data. But I will foot stomp a remark I made earlier, namely, that we see true benefit to this team working solely on unclassified data. Because when you restrict yourself to those types of data, you can collaborate freely, with academia, with industry, with international partners, and we need as many eyes on this subject as possible. So there’s actually a huge advantage about it. And also, we can speak about it in public. Again, huge benefit for us to do it like this.

Karen Fox  41:42

Thank you. Moving on to Andrea Leinfelder with the Houston Chronicle.

Andrea Leinfelder  41:49

Hi, I, thanks for taking the questions. First, I want to double check the AR o stat. It said there have been more than 800 UAP sightings collect in the past 27 years. And of those maybe two to 5% are truly anomalous, is that correct? And then second, you know, data has been a really big part of the conversation a day. But I’m really struggling to explain it just a very simple way, how we are going to collect better data, you know, you’ve talked about multiple sources, maybe using existing assets. But if you just kind of give me more of a direct answer on how to collect better data for this random event, thank you.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  42:31

This is Dr. Kirkpatrick from AARO. Those stats are correct. It’s we’re currently tracking over 800 cases. In few percent of those are truly anomalous, those numbers are going to change. They change weekly. And in our our file, our annual report coming up here this summer, you’ll get new numbers that have come out. My hope is that as we build out our website, those statistics will be kept up in real time. So people can just take a look at where we are in the picture. To answer your second question, I’ll start and then I’ll hand it over to you guys. From a how do we get better data perspective, I spoke a little bit this morning about analyzing the data sets that exist in current sensors, whether that’s FAA sensors or overhead sensors, to look at what sensors can actually see the types of things that we’re looking for, which I also spoke about this morning. And then further, we’ve got some purpose built surveillance systems that we’re deploying for just that purpose to look for search and track any of these objects over long periods of time so that we can get a baseline pattern analysis and a life analysis so that we can understand what’s normal, and what’s not normal. And then from there, we will bootstrap ourselves up into what sort of signatures are we picking out? And how do we refine our collection architecture to go after that? This will take time working through the data and the signatures that we have, it’ll be a little bit of searching of some old data, it’ll be looking at dedicated sensors in the future. Dan or David overdue?

David Spergel  44:25

Yeah. So something we are thinking about, and this is I would, you know, as I said at the beginning, we’re still we’re not yet written our report. We’re still in the stage of deliberating is the use of cell phones. We have there’s a water terminal three to 4 billion cell phones in the world. It’s a great citizen science opportunity. And cell phones record not only images, we’re all used to cell phone cameras, but they measure the local magnetic field Are there Graviton monitors, they measure sound, then they encode enormous amount of information about the environment around them. They pick up GPS signals, so have accurate timestamps and location stamps. And something that I think a number of us have been thinking about is, you know, potentially making a recommendation about NASA inlet, either internally, or, more likely externally enlisting a company to develop an app that could record data on cell phones, and then perhaps supporting the development of a website in which this data would be uploaded. If and if you have something seen by multiple cell phones, with good timestamp, data’s at multiple angles, you’re able to infer the location and velocity of that object. Most of the time, that will tell you it’s a plane, it’s a balloon, whatever. And if it’s something novel, you have high quality, uniformly selected data that can be used, and then combined with other data sets, like radar data, overhead data. And you I think the way one would want to understand really, you know, first eliminate the normal and then identify anything interesting is have multi-platform data that one can combine in an interesting way. And I think that’s, I think the way a number of us are thinking about how we might approach this,

Karen Fox  46:41

and Federica Bianco.

Frederica Bianco  46:42

Yeah, just to add that one of the things we emphasize multiple times today already is that the data needs to be well calibrated. So not only do we need to collect large amounts of data, but the information of the metadata so the information about the data has to be collected at the same time. So really, an ideal platform will give you not only the data, but also a wealth of information about the sensor that then allows you to really understand the context in which the data will stay.

Karen Fox  47:10

Thank you. We have about 10 minutes left and many, many questions. So I am going to try and get through as many as we can. But please note when you ask your question, and when you answer it, we might start picking up the pace a little bit, even though I know that’s not what any of us prefer to do. Alright, so our next question is Leonard David with Scientific American.

Leonard David  47:30

You know, thanks for doing this. I guess the question I’ve got is, you know, to what extent is the term UAP giving the folklore kind of mystique of UFOs and we’re talking Roswell crash, recovered aliens, public encounters, you know, on and on. Is that term UAP? Could it have nothing to do with a possibility? Other star folk visiting here?

Karen Fox  48:04

Okay, we have somebody, Mike, are you going to jump in? But

Mike Gold  48:09

Hey, Leonard, it’s good to hear your voice. This is Mike Gold. I think the very term UAP was intended to get away from the assumptions and baggage that are part of the term UFO. Again, I’m a recovering attorney. So I believe words matter, words of power. And I think what was trying to be achieved with that terminology. And what we’re trying to do with this group, is to be agnostic, to be objective, and to look at this issue, purely from a scientific perspective, without bias. So I believe that was the intent. Whether or not it’s been successful is up to you. But I think it was a valuable intent. And it’s certainly a goal that we have this with this group to eliminate the bias and to proceed from an objective scientific perspective.

Karen Fox  49:02

Thank you very much. Next question is from Doris Urrutia from inverse.

Doris Elin Urrutia  49:10

Hello, thank you for having this meeting. So to clarify, how many of the 800 samadhi UAP sightings has the 16 person group been able to view and of the several dozen do a piece sightings that remain anomalous? Are there hints of a natural origin for at least those that the 16 person team has access to view? For example, could this could be anomalous? UAPs be explained by something along the lines of sprites or ball lightning? Thank you.

David Spergel  49:45

So our this is David Spergel. Our remit was not really to go through those 800 events, right, that that really is the responsibility that Congress gave ARL Our task was to To develop a roadmap for NASA, on how they could contribute, where to go

Dan Evans  50:08

precisely that. Great,

Karen Fox  50:10

thank you. Moving on to Natalie Jonas with Aerospace America.

Natalie Jonas  50:19

Yeah, thanks for doing this meeting. I have a question for David Spergel. So you mentioned the creation of an app to submit sightings and media taking people across the country. Is this in production? Is this in production or just an idea to help sort of help centralize citizen science data?

David Spergel  50:38

You know, our job is to make recommendations to NASA. So this is a I would say a potential recommendation. Since we haven’t written a report yet that we might make to NASA and then NASA would make any decision on implementation. We’re, we’re an independent advisory board. You know, our our responsibility is to give advice. As someone who has commissioned independent advisory boards, Nasser’s responsibility is to listen to their advice, take it seriously, and then assess which aspects of it they want to follow.

Karen Fox  51:17

Great, thank you very much. We will be sharing these recommendations of course when they are finished, and we will make them all public. Next question is from Keith Cowen with NASAWatch.com.

Keith Cowen  51:30

By a question for Dr. Evans, this committee is engaged in the topic that I think everybody will agree, the public is equating with the search for life life, Elson the work elsewhere in the universe, even if it isn’t in the charter, even if you don’t want to make that connection. And I get the whole stigma thing, the giggle factor and the threats, trust me. But to be honest, NASA also allows some goofy sci fi movies with aliens to be shot in their facilities with a big NASA logo. My question with regard to the whole transparency issue is why is it that the NASA Astrobiology website, the NASA citizen Citizen Science website, the NASA Education website all make no mention of this committee or the meeting today? Or the topic under discussion? And how can you really do this with a straight and straight face if you really don’t want to just connect the obvious public interest with the program? Astrobiology that has been set up to look for life in the universe.

Dan Evans  52:27

Okay, firstly, I love love your Twitter stream, I get so much information from it. So thank you for that. Look. Point number one. And I want to emphasize this loud and proud that there is absolutely no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life or associated with UAPs, anything like that? I think that when we stood up this incredible team, we did so in recognition of the fact that we need to get to an answer without assuming an origin going in. And we also acknowledge that there could potentially be very serious risks to us airspace as a result of us not necessarily knowing what is in our skies at a given time. And of course, that has national security implications, as well. To your point about astrobiology. Well, of course, astrobiology primarily focuses on the search for life in the universe. And the study is the origins and the study of UAPs is truly a distinct undertaking, in its own right. It has its own goals, its own methodologies. And that’s primarily concerned with identifying the nature and origin of UAPs. Not necessarily connecting that with the search for extraterrestrial life. As I’ve said numerous times today, we are all committed to transparency, and openness at NASA. And this is why we’re holding these meetings or this meeting in such a public forum. This is why you’ve been able to see the team really do science. And this is why we will be releasing the full report later this summer on our website.

Karen Fox  54:35

Thank you very much. If we move quickly, I think we have time for two more questions. So next up is Julian Barnes with the New York Times.

Julian Barnes  54:45

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Clarification, you mentioned that there had been an uptick of reports after the Chinese spy balloon transmitted the US Do you have any further information about how Many more numbers, that how many more reports that yielded. And then the geometry around the Coface video was pretty interesting. Do you have any other plans to do similar explanations of the other Pentagon videos that might explain why they could be optical illusions or things like that?

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick  55:29

Hi, this is Dr. Kirkpatrick from AARO, let me answer your first question. And then I’ll tell you what our plans are going forward. So the the uptick that was alluded to by some of the panel members. No, I don’t have an exact number for you from I guess, February until now, we can certainly do the math on what we reported in the last annual report we have, we’ve had a cut off date of December to now which is when it was about 511 or so and last year’s annual report, and it’s over 800. Now that number changes all the time. A lot of the uptick we’ve had recently is mostly because we’ve integrated the FAA data, which is, you know, over 100 new cases, just alone in the last few weeks. So, but that covers many, many years worth of data. That’s not like all at once. So it’s, it’s a little bit of a misnomer to think all of that increases just over the last few months. It’s covers many, many years. And all that will be detailed, of course, in our our report this summer. And as we get the website going, and we can have all these statistics out there for everybody, they can see it all the time. Your second question on the analysis performed on one of those videos, that is ultimately our goal at AARO is that we are going to do that level of analytics, that level of scientific deconvolution of all of these cases as we get them and we can work through them with the scientific community with the intelligence community, reduce those to digestible forms that we can then declassify and put out on the website for people to look at along with all of the associated analysis. That’s that is the ultimate goal, as I’ve said, in many occasions, as we’ve laid out the plans for how AARO is going to operate. And we will do that with our NASA team, with our interagency team with our scientific community.

Karen Fox  57:39

Thank you so much. I promise one last question. And then we’ll have to wrap it up today. Robert Coppinger with spaceflight magazine. Hello.

Robert Coppinger  57:50

So the recommendations are not going to come until the end of July. Or you’re not going to get anything into the FY 24 budget for following work. And Dr. Evans, are you going to lead the collaboration, any collaboration with the UK space agency? Because you’re British? And also Carlene toner, could you? I think I heard you say the FAA might make it mandatory for pilots to to make reports about UAP. Did I hear you correctly those. That’s the more questions. Thanks.

Dan Evans  58:26

Okay, thanks very much. Well, certainly for the purposes of today, I’m absolutely an American citizen. I’m a dual national. Let me get get to budget questions. You know, we have a lengthy budget process right now, this agency is going through internal preparations for the FY 25 budget request. Too early to say what would happen there because it’s a hallmark of us of data science to really have this deep partnership with the community. And by having this august group of independent experts come in, we solidify that partnership, and we look forward to their recommendations. And we’ll take appropriate action at the right time, too early to say which fiscal year if any things would fall into and as I said earlier, it’s a complicated process federal budgeting, to your question about involvement with the UK space agency. No, we have not had any, although, as Dr. Kirkpatrick said, we had a brief meeting last week with the five eyes that I sat in on more as a fly on the wall than anything acknowledging again, that there are different swim lanes and DOD in the intelligence community have vastly different interests in UAP than NASA’s science program.

Karen Fox  59:51

And the second question about the FAA

Karlin Toner  59:56

This is Carlin toner and I’ll start but I might turn it over to Warren Randolph. Follow up. So we heard from our speaker this morning, our FAA surveillance experts, that the controllers do have an operational procedure to report things that they see. And I believe similarly, the FAA does not mandate pilots can report but there is a volunteer reporting system and I have Warren clarify that.

Warren Randolph  1:00:23

Sure. Thank you, Warren Randolph. Yes, the system. First of all, just just to reiterate what Colin just said, and to answer the question directly, there are no plans and there are no requirements for required UAP reporting. So I want to be on our airmen. I want to be clear about that. From the federal government level, there may be internal reporting requirements at different operators or what have you, but there is nothing in the civilian, federal government and the FAA there is no regulatory requirements want to be clear there. Now, there are voluntary reporting environments. And the aviation community utilizes those one is the excuse me, the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, a s Rs. There are some voluntary, submitted reports from flight crews as well as air traffic, basically citing UFO or UAP. So that’s in the public domain. And I encourage you to take a look at that.

Karen Fox  1:01:28

Thank you so much. To those on the line. I do apologize for those whose questions we could not get to you should feel free to send an email in to Katherine Rohloff. And to me, Karen Fox, and we will try to get answers to you. Thank you so much for our panel. It’s been a long day and I think we are wrapping up now. Thank you so much.

Operator  1:01:54

And this does conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect at this time.

The post NASA’s Public UAP Meeting Media Teleconference Held May 31, 2023 first appeared on The Black Vault.

In December of 2021, The Black Vault profiled a paper by Dr. Spergel that came up in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. This paper appears to have never circulated publicly before.

You can read Dr. Spergel’s paper below, then visit the NASA UAP / UFO Related Internal Communications page for more FOIA finds.

Document Archive

Thoughts on UFOs by Dr. David Spergel [4 Pages, 0.7MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [713.29 KB]

The post Dr. David Spergel and his UFO paper written prior to becoming NASA’s UAP Study Chairperson first appeared on The Black Vault.

NASA has selected 16 individuals to participate in its independent study team on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or as known natural phenomena are categorized as UAPs.

The independent study will begin on Monday, Oct. 24. Over the course of nine months, the independent study team will lay the groundwork for future study on the nature of UAPs for NASA and other organizations. To do this, the team will identify how data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources can potentially be analyzed to shed light on UAPs. It will then recommend a roadmap for potential UAP data analysis by the agency going forward.

The study will focus solely on unclassified data. A full report containing the team’s findings will be released to the public in mid-2023.

“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”

Unidentified aerial phenomena are of interest for both national security and air safety and the study aligns with one of NASA’s goals to ensure the safety of aircraft. Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP.

The NASA official responsible for orchestrating the study is Daniel Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. As previously announced, the independent study team is chaired by David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation.

“NASA has brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, data and artificial intelligence practitioners, aerospace safety experts, all with a specific charge, which is to tell us how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP,” said Evans. “The findings will be released to the public in conjunction with NASA’s principles of transparency, openness, and scientific integrity.”

The members of NASA’s independent study team on unidentified aerial phenomena are:

David Spergel was selected to chair NASA’s independent study on unidentified aerial phenomena. He is the president of the Simons Foundation where he was the founding director of its Flatiron Institute for Computational Astrophysics. His interests range from the search for planets and nearby stars to the shape of the universe. He has measured the age, shape and composition of the universe and played a key role in establishing the standard model of cosmology. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Spergel has been cited in publications more than 100,000 times.

Anamaria Berea is an associate professor of Computational and Data Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is a research affiliate with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a research investigator with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle. Her research is focused on the emergence of communication in complex living systems and on data science applications in astrobiology, for the science of both biosignatures and technosignatures. She uses a wide range of computational methods to uncover fundamental patterns in the data. ​​

Federica Bianco is a joint professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and the Urban Observatory. She is a cross-disciplinary scientist with a focus on using data-science to study the universe and find solutions to urban-based problems on earth. She also coordinates more than 1,500 scientists for the 2023 Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Science Collaboration to study the night sky in the southern hemisphere and discover new galaxies and stars. She has been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and received that Department of Energy’s “Innovative Development in Energy-Related Applied Science” grant.

Paula Bontempi has been a biological oceanographer for more than 25 years. She is the sixth dean and the second woman to lead the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island (URI). She is also a professor of oceanography at URI. She spent eighteen years at NASA and was appointed acting deputy director of NASA’s Earth Science Division for the Science Mission Directorate. She also led NASA’s research on ocean biology, biogeochemistry, the carbon cycle and ecosystems, as well as many NASA Earth observing satellite missions in marine science. She is a fellow of The Oceanography Society.

Reggie Brothers is the operating partner at AE Industrial Partners in Boca Raton, Florida. He previously served as CEO and board member of BigBear.ai in Columbia, Maryland. Brothers also was the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Peraton, as well as a principal with the Chertoff Group. Prior to his time in the private sector, he served as the undersecretary for Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research at the Department of Defense. Brothers is also a Distinguished Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and he is a member of the Visiting Committee for Sponsored Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jen Buss is the CEO of the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies in Arlington, Virginia. Before she became CEO, Buss worked extensively with NASA to explore policy issues and strategic planning processes for astronaut medical care and cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. She is nationally recognized as an authority in her field for science and technology trends analysis and policy solutions.

Nadia Drake is a freelance science journalist and contributing writer at National Geographic. She also regularly writes for Scientific American, and specializes in covering astronomy, astrophysics, planetary sciences, and jungles. She has won journalism awards for her work in National Geographic including the David N. Schramm Award from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society and the Jonathan Eberhart award from the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences. Drake holds a doctorate in genetics from Cornell University.

Mike Gold is the executive vice president of Civil Space and External Affairs at Redwire in Jacksonville, Florida. Prior to Redwire, Gold held multiple leadership roles at NASA, including associate administrator for Space Policy and Partnerships, acting associate administrator for the Office of International and Interagency Relations and senior advisor to the Administrator for International and Legal Affairs. He led for NASA, jointly with the Department of State, the creation and execution of the Artemis Accords, which established the norms of behavior in space. He also led the negotiation and adoption of binding international agreements for the lunar Gateway, the creation of new planetary protocols and the first purchase by NASA of a lunar resource. Gold was awarded NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal for his work in 2020.Additionally, Gold was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to serve as Chair of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee from 2012 until he joined NASA in 2019.

David Grinspoon is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscon, Arizona, and serves as a frequent advisor to NASA on space exploration. He is on science teams for several interplanetary spacecraft missions including the DAVINCI mission to Venus. He is the former inaugural Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. His research focuses on comparative planetology especially regarding climate evolution and the implications of habitability on earth-like planets. He was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal by the American Astronomical Society and he is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also an adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, as well as Georgetown University in Washington.

Scott Kelly is a former NASA astronaut, test pilot, fighter pilot, and retired U.S. Navy captain. He commanded the International Space Station Expeditions 26, 45, and 46. He was also the pilot of Space Shuttle Discovery for the third Hubble Servicing Mission. He was selected for a year-long mission to the space station where he set the record at the time for the total accumulated number of days spent in space. Prior to NASA, Kelly was the first pilot to fly the F-14 with a new digital flight control system. He flew the F-14 Tomcat in fighter squadron VF-143 aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. He is a two-time New York Times bestselling author and was recognized by Time magazine in 2015 as one of the most influential people in the world.

Matt Mountain is the president of The Association of Universities for Research and Astronomy, known as AURA. At AURA, Mountain oversees a consortium of 44 universities nationwide and four international affiliates who help NASA and the National Science Foundation build and operate observatories including NASA’s Hubble Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. He also serves as a telescope scientist for Webb and is a member of its Science Working Group. He is the former director of The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and the International Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii.

Warren Randolph is the deputy executive director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Accident Investigation and Prevention for Aviation Safety department. He has an extensive background in aviation safety at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is currently responsible for setting and implementing safety management system principles and using data to inform the assessment of future hazards and emerging safety risks. Prior to the FAA, Randolph served as an aerodynamicist for the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Air Force for multiple flight simulations.

Walter Scott is the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Maxar in Westminster, Colorado, a space technology company that specializes in earth intelligence and space infrastructure. In 1992, he founded DigitalGlobe which became part of Maxar in 2017. He has held leadership positions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California and was the president of Scott Consulting. In 2021, he was inducted into the David W. Thompson Lecture in Space Commerce by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Joshua Semeter is a professor of electrical and computer engineering as well as the director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University. At Boston University, he researches interactions between Earth’s ionosphere and the space environment. Activities in Semeter’s lab include the development of optical and magnetic sensor technologies, radar experiment design and signal processing, and the application of tomographic and other inversion techniques to the analysis of distributed, multi-mode measurements of the space environment.

Karlin Toner is the acting executive director of the FAA’s Office of Aviation Policy and Plans. Previously, she served as the director of the FAA’s global strategy where she led the FAA’s international strategy and managed threats to international civil aviation. Prior to the FAA, Toner served at NASA in multiple leadership positions including director of the Airspace Systems Program at NASA Headquarters. She is a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal recipient and is an associate fellow for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Shelley Wright is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Studies. She specializes in galaxies, supermassive black holes and building optical and infrared instruments for telescopes using adaptive optics such as integral field spectrographs. She is a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) researcher and instrumentalist. She is also the principal investigator for the UC San Diego Optical Infrared Laboratory. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute.

The post NASA Announces Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Study Team Members first appeared on The Black Vault.

Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft’s kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.

“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA’s exceptional team and partners from around the world.”

Prior to DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. Since DART’s intentional collision with Dimorphos on Sept. 26, astronomers have been using telescopes on Earth to measure how much that time has changed. Now, the investigation team has confirmed the spacecraft’s impact altered Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, shortening the 11 hour and 55-minute orbit to 11 hours and 23 minutes. This measurement has a margin of uncertainty of approximately plus or minus 2 minutes.

Before its encounter, NASA had defined a minimum successful orbit period change of Dimorphos as change of 73 seconds or more. This early data show DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times.

“This result is one important step toward understanding the full effect of DART’s impact with its target asteroid” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way.”

The investigation team is still acquiring data with ground-based observatories around the world – as well as with radar facilities at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Goldstone planetary radar in California and the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. They are updating the period measurement with frequent observations to improve its precision.

Focus now is shifting toward measuring the efficiency of momentum transfer from DART’s roughly 14,000-mile (22,530-kilometer) per hour collision with its target. This includes further analysis of the “ejecta” – the many tons of asteroidal rock displaced and launched into space by the impact. The recoil from this blast of debris substantially enhanced DART’s push against Dimorphos – a little like a jet of air streaming out of a balloon sends the balloon in the opposite direction.

To successfully understand the effect of the recoil from the ejecta, more information on of the asteroid’s physical properties, such as the characteristics of its surface, and how strong or weak it is, is needed. These issues are still being investigated.

“DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.”

For this analysis, astronomers will continue to study imagery of Dimorphos from DART’s terminal approach and from the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, to approximate the asteroid’s mass and shape. Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project is also planned to conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.

Johns Hopkins APL built and operated the DART spacecraft and manages the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. Telescopic facilities contributing to the observations used by the DART team to determine this result include: Goldstone, Green Bank Observatory, Swope Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the Danish Telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network facilities in Chile and in South Africa.

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos poses any hazard to Earth before or after DART’s controlled collision with Dimorphos.

For more information about the DART mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/dart

The post NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space first appeared on The Black Vault.

Document Archive

Preliminary Study of Capsule Recovery for the First Series of Project Mercury Orbital Flights – July 1, 1959 [241 Pages, 30MB]

The post Preliminary Study of Capsule Recovery for the First Series of Project Mercury Orbital Flights – July 1, 1959 first appeared on The Black Vault.

Download them all

[ .zip Archive of ALL FIVE Highest Resolution Images Available of the below (351MB) ]

NASA’s Webb Reveals Cosmic Cliffs, Glittering Landscape of Star Birth

The seemingly three-dimensional “Cosmic Cliffs” showcases Webb’s capabilities to peer through obscuring dust and shed new light on how stars form. Webb reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that are completely hidden in visible-light pictures. This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” is actually the edge of a nearby stellar nursery called NGC 3324 at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula. So-called mountains — some towering about 7 light-years high — are speckled with glittering, young stars imaged in infrared light. A cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located above the area shown in this image. The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from these stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars rise above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation. Objects in the earliest, rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb’s extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution and imaging capability can chronicle these elusive events.

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.

The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.

Webb reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that are completely hidden in visible-light pictures. Because of Webb’s sensitivity to infrared light, it can peer through cosmic dust to see these objects. Protostellar jets, which emerge clearly in this image, shoot out from some of these young stars. The youngest sources appear as red dots in the dark, dusty region of the cloud. Objects in the earliest, rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb’s extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability can chronicle these elusive events.

These observations of NGC 3324 will shed light on the process of star formation. Star birth propagates over time, triggered by the expansion of the eroding cavity. As the bright, ionized rim moves into the nebula, it slowly pushes into the gas and dust. If the rim encounters any unstable material, the increased pressure will trigger the material to collapse and form new stars.

Conversely, this type of disturbance may also prevent star formation as the star-making material is eroded away. This is a very delicate balance between sparking star formation and stopping it. Webb will address some of the great, open questions of modern astrophysics: What determines the number of stars that form in a certain region? Why do stars form with a certain mass?

Webb will also reveal the impact of star formation on the evolution of gigantic clouds of gas and dust. While the effect of massive stars – with their violent winds and high energy – is often apparent, less is known about the influence of the more numerous low-mass stars. As they form, these smaller stars create narrow, opposing jets seen here, which can inject a lot of momentum and energy into the clouds. This reduces the fraction of nebular material that seeds new stars.

Up to this point, scientists have had very little data about the influence of the multitude of young and more energetic low-mass stars. With Webb, they will be able to obtain a full census of their number and impact throughout the nebula.

Located roughly 7,600 light-years away, NGC 3324 was imaged by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

NIRCam – with its crisp resolution and unparalleled sensitivity – unveils hundreds of previously hidden stars, and even numerous background galaxies.

In MIRI’s view, young stars and their dusty, planet-forming disks shine brightly in the mid-infrared, appearing pink and red. MIRI reveals structures that are embedded in the dust and uncovers the stellar sources of massive jets and outflows. With MIRI, the hot dust, hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds on the surface of the ridges glow, giving the appearance of jagged rocks.

NGC 3324 was first catalogued by James Dunlop in 1826. Visible from the Southern Hemisphere, it is located at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), which resides in the constellation Carina. The Carina Nebula is home to the Keyhole Nebula and the active, unstable supergiant star called Eta Carinae.

NASA’s Webb Sheds Light on Galaxy Evolution, Black Holes

The close proximity of Stephan’s Quintet gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions In an enormous new image, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of the galaxy group called “Stephan’s Quintet.” The close proximity of this group gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions. Rarely do scientists see in so much detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other, and how the gas in these galaxies is being disturbed. Stephan’s Quintet is a fantastic “laboratory” for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies. The image also shows outflows driven by a supermassive black hole in one of the group’s galaxies in a level of detail never seen before. Tight galaxy groups like this may have been more common in the early universe when superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes.

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

Together, the five galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are truly close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and leftmost galaxy, called NGC 7320, is well in the foreground compared with the other four. NGC 7320 resides 40 million light-years from Earth, while the other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are about 290 million light-years away. This is still fairly close in cosmic terms, compared with more distant galaxies billions of light-years away. Studying such relatively nearby galaxies like these helps scientists better understand structures seen in a much more distant universe.

This proximity provides astronomers a ringside seat for witnessing the merging and interactions between galaxies that are so crucial to all of galaxy evolution. Rarely do scientists see in so much detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other, and how the gas in these galaxies is being disturbed. Stephan’s Quintet is a fantastic “laboratory” for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies.

Tight groups like this may have been more common in the early universe when their superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes called quasars. Even today, the topmost galaxy in the group – NGC 7319 – harbors an active galactic nucleus, a supermassive black hole 24 million times the mass of the Sun. It is actively pulling in material and puts out light energy equivalent to 40 billion Suns.

Webb studied the active galactic nucleus in great detail with the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). These instruments’ integral field units (IFUs) – which are a combination of a camera and spectrograph – provided the Webb team with a “data cube,” or collection of images of the galactic core’s spectral features.

Much like medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the IFUs allow scientists to “slice and dice” the information into many images for detailed study. Webb pierced through the shroud of dust surrounding the nucleus to reveal hot gas near the active black hole and measure the velocity of bright outflows. The telescope saw these outflows driven by the black hole in a level of detail never seen before.

In NGC 7320, the leftmost and closest galaxy in the visual grouping, Webb was able to resolve individual stars and even the galaxy’s bright core.

As a bonus, Webb revealed a vast sea of thousands of distant background galaxies reminiscent of Hubble’s Deep Fields.

Combined with the most detailed infrared image ever of Stephan’s Quintet from MIRI and the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the data from Webb will provide a bounty of valuable, new information. For example, it will help scientists understand the rate at which supermassive black holes feed and grow. Webb also sees star-forming regions much more directly, and it is able to examine emission from the dust – a level of detail impossible to obtain until now.

Located in the constellation Pegasus, Stephan’s Quintet was discovered by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877.

NASA’s Webb Captures Dying Star’s Final ‘Performance’ in Fine Detail

The second star in the Southern Ring Nebula comes into full view, along with exceptional structures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has cast the Southern Ring Nebula in an entirely new light. By observing the nebula in mid-infrared wavelengths, Webb has unveiled the second, dusty star at the center of the nebula in far more detail. The star closely orbits its companion as it periodically ejects layers of gas and dust. Together, the swirling duo have created a fantastic landscape of asymmetrical shells. Webb’s near-infrared light image hones in on “spotlights” from the stars, where light travels through holes in the nebula’s dusty ejections.

Some stars save the best for last.

The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust.

Two cameras aboard Webb captured the latest image of this planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 3132, and known informally as the Southern Ring Nebula. It is approximately 2,500 light-years away.

Webb will allow astronomers to dig into many more specifics about planetary nebulae like this one – clouds of gas and dust expelled by dying stars. Understanding which molecules are present, and where they lie throughout the shells of gas and dust will help researchers refine their knowledge of these objects.

This observation shows the Southern Ring Nebula almost face-on, but if we could rotate it to view it edge-on, its three-dimensional shape would more clearly look like two bowls placed together at the bottom, opening away from one another with a large hole at the center.

Two stars, which are locked in a tight orbit, shape the local landscape. Webb’s infrared images feature new details in this complex system. The stars – and their layers of light – are prominent in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the left, while the image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the right shows for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust. The brighter star is in an earlier stage of its stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.

In the meantime, the brighter star influences the nebula’s appearance. As the pair continues to orbit one another, they “stir the pot” of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns.

Each shell represents an episode where the fainter star lost some of its mass. The widest shells of gas toward the outer areas of the image were ejected earlier. Those closest to the star are the most recent. Tracing these ejections allows researchers to look into the history of the system.

Observations taken with NIRCam also reveal extremely fine rays of light around the planetary nebula. Starlight from the central stars streams out where there are holes in the gas and dust – like sunlight through gaps in a cloud.

Since planetary nebulae exist for tens of thousands of years, observing the nebula is like watching a movie in exceptionally slow motion. Each shell the star puffed off gives researchers the ability to precisely measure the gas and dust that are present within it.

As the star ejects shells of material, dust and molecules form within them – changing the landscape even as the star continues to expel material. This dust will eventually enrich the areas around it, expanding into what’s known as the interstellar medium. And since it’s very long-lived, the dust may end up traveling through space for billions of years and become incorporated into a new star or planet.

In thousands of years, these delicate layers of gas and dust will dissipate into surrounding space.

Webb Reveals Steamy Atmosphere of Distant Planet in Exquisite Detail

In a dream come true for exoplaneteers, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has demonstrated its unprecedented ability to analyze the atmosphere of a planet more than 1,000 light-years away. With the combined forces of its 270-square-foot mirror, precision spectrographs, and sensitive detectors, Webb has – in a single observation – revealed the unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence for clouds that were thought not to exist based on prior observations. The transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant WASP-96 b, made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, provides just a glimpse into the brilliant future of exoplanet research with Webb.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.

The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away.

While the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres over the past two decades, capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks a giant leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

WASP-96 b is one of more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way. Located roughly 1,150 light-years away in the southern-sky constellation Phoenix, it represents a type of gas giant that has no direct analog in our solar system. With a mass less than half that of Jupiter and a diameter 1.2 times greater, WASP-96 b is much puffier than any planet orbiting our Sun. And with a temperature greater than 1000°F, it is significantly hotter. WASP-96 b orbits extremely close to its Sun-like star, just one-ninth of the distance between Mercury and the Sun, completing one circuit every 3½ Earth-days.

The combination of large size, short orbital period, puffy atmosphere, and lack of contaminating light from objects nearby in the sky makes WASP-96 b an ideal target for atmospheric observations.

On June 21, Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system for 6.4 hours as the planet moved across the star. The result is a light curve showing the overall dimming of starlight during the transit, and a transmission spectrum revealing the brightness change of individual wavelengths of infrared light between 0.6 and 2.8 microns.

While the light curve confirms properties of the planet that had already been determined from other observations – the existence, size, and orbit of the planet – the transmission spectrum reveals previously hidden details of the atmosphere: the unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds that were thought not to exist based on prior observations.

A transmission spectrum is made by comparing starlight filtered through a planet’s atmosphere as it moves across the star to the unfiltered starlight detected when the planet is beside the star. Researchers are able to detect and measure the abundances of key gases in a planet’s atmosphere based on the absorption pattern – the locations and heights of peaks on the graph. In the same way that people have distinctive fingerprints and DNA sequences, atoms and molecules have characteristic patterns of wavelengths that they absorb.

The spectrum of WASP-96 b captured by NIRISS is not only the most detailed near-infrared transmission spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere captured to date, but it also covers a remarkably wide range of wavelengths, including visible red light and a portion of the spectrum that has not previously been accessible from other telescopes (wavelengths longer than 1.6 microns). This part of the spectrum is particularly sensitive to water as well as other key molecules like oxygen, methane, and carbon dioxide, which are not immediately obvious in the WASP-96 b spectrum but which should be detectable in other exoplanets planned for observation by Webb.

Researchers will be able to use the spectrum to measure the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, constrain the abundance of various elements like carbon and oxygen, and estimate the temperature of the atmosphere with depth. They can then use this information to make inferences about the overall make-up of the planet, as well as how, when, and where it formed. The blue line on the graph is a best-fit model that takes into account the data, the known properties of WASP-96 b and its star (e.g., size, mass, temperature), and assumed characteristics of the atmosphere.

The exceptional detail and clarity of these measurements is possible because of Webb’s state-of-the-art design. Its 270-square-foot gold-coated mirror collects infrared light efficiently. Its precision spectrographs spread light out into rainbows of thousands of infrared colors. And its sensitive infrared detectors measure extremely subtle differences in brightness. NIRISS is able to detect color differences of only about one thousandth of a micron (the difference between green and yellow is about 50 microns), and differences in the brightness between those colors of a few hundred parts per million.

In addition, Webb’s extreme stability and its orbital location around Lagrange Point 2, roughly a million miles away from the contaminating effects of Earth’s atmosphere, makes for an uninterrupted view and clean data that can be analyzed relatively quickly.

The extraordinarily detailed spectrum – made by simultaneously analyzing 280 individual spectra captured over the observation – provides just a hint of what Webb has in store for exoplanet research. Over the coming year, researchers will use spectroscopy to analyze the surfaces and atmospheres of several dozen exoplanets, from small rocky planets to gas- and ice-rich giants . Nearly one-quarter of Webb’s Cycle 1 observation time is allocated to studying exoplanets and the materials that form them.

This NIRISS observation demonstrates that Webb has the power to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets – including those of potentially habitable planets – in exquisite detail.

NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Image of Universe Yet

A flurry of bright white galaxies is stirring up this scene – captured in high resolution by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Known as galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, the group of galaxies is also bending and warping the light from more distant galaxies behind them, stretching and repeating their appearances. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared imaging – and highly detailed data known as spectra – will allow future researchers to finely catalog the precise compositions of galaxies in the early universe, which may ultimately reshape our understanding of how galaxies changed and evolved over billions of years.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Affectionately known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the smallest, faintest objects ever observed.

Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning. Researchers will continue to use Webb to take longer exposures, revealing more of our vast universe.

This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster. Much more about this cluster will be revealed as researchers begin digging into Webb’s data. This field was also imaged by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which observes mid-infrared light.

Webb’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

Light from these galaxies took billions of years to reach us. We are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang when viewing the youngest galaxies in this field. The light was stretched by the expansion of the universe to infrared wavelengths that Webb was designed to observe. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

Other features include the prominent arcs in this field. The powerful gravitational field of a galaxy cluster can bend the light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, just as a magnifying glass bends and warps images. Stars are also captured with prominent diffraction spikes, as they appear brighter at shorter wavelengths.

Webb’s MIRI image offers a kaleidoscope of colors and highlights where the dust is – a major ingredient for star formation, and ultimately life itself. Blue galaxies contain stars, but very little dust. The red objects in this field are enshrouded in thick layers of dust. Green galaxies are populated with hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds. Researchers will be able to use data like these to understand how galaxies form, grow, and merge with each other, and in some cases why they stop forming stars altogether.

In addition to taking images, two of Webb’s instruments also obtained spectra – data that reveal objects’ physical and chemical properties that will help researchers identify many more details about distant galaxies in this field. Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) microshutter array observed 48 individual galaxies at the same time – a new technology used for the first time in space – returning a full suite of details about each. The data revealed light from one galaxy that traveled for 13.1 billion years before Webb’s mirrors captured it. NIRSpec data also demonstrate how detailed galaxy spectra will be with Webb observations.

Finally, Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) used Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy to capture spectra of all the objects in the entire field of view at once. Among the results, it proves that one of the galaxies has a mirror image.

SMACS 0723 can be viewed near the constellation Volans in the southern sky.

The post A Compilation of the James Webb Telescope First Released Images first appeared on The Black Vault.

• President Joe Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, during a White House event Monday, July 11
• Webb’s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe
• Webb’s sharp near-infrared view brought out faint structures in extremely distant galaxies, offering the most detailed view of the early universe to date
• NASA and its partners will release the full series of Webb’s first full-color images and data, known as spectra, Tuesday, July 12, during a live NASA TV broadcast

(Download the FULL Resolution)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.

This image is among the telescope’s first-full color images. The full suite will be released Tuesday, July 12, beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT, during a live NASA TV broadcast. Learn more about how to watch.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

The post NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet, July 11, 2022 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The organization that posted the photos of Dr. Zurbuchen later took them down, but The Black Vault had already contacted NASA, and learned that Dr. Zurbuchen was at a NAS event, held by the organizations Space Studies Board.

Days after the event, the NAS posted the entire PowerPoint presentation package. That is available below.

The Black Vault extracted the UAP related slides here, to highlight that section.

Special thanks to Twitter user Dr. Disclosure (@Disclosure89) for letting me know it had finally been posted.

UAP Related Slides

Full Presentation

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen/NASA Slides Relating to UAP/UFO Program, June 2022 [45 Pages, 5MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [5.02 MB]

The post Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen/NASA Slides Relating to UAP/UFO Program, June 2022 first appeared on The Black Vault.

“In honor of World Space Week, we’re visiting the Naval Observatory in Washington to talk to none other than Vice President Kamala Harris about the National Space Council. We also hear from NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who joins us from the International Space Station – that’s right, from space! Plus, we’re building a DIY telescope that you can make yourself at home.”

There was much controversy about the video, given that it was said to be scripted and using child actors, and was heavily mocked on social media.

In October of 2021, The Black Vault filed a request for all records pertaining to the creation of the video. This sought after all “budgets, contracts, agreements, proposals, drafts of the script(s), communications about the video’s creation (both internal NASA communication and inter-agency communication including with the White House, VP Kamala Harris, or her staff), rough cuts, fine cuts, and all other cuts prior to the final cut of the video.”

The result is the below. The video is provided for archival purposes, as well.

Vice President Kamala Harris and an Astronaut? What A Day! | Get Curious with Vice President Harris

Document Archive

NASA’s ‘Get Curious with Vice President Harris’ Video Records from NASA, Released May 2022 [98 Pages, 20.5MB]

The post NASA’s ‘Get Curious with Vice President Harris’ Video first appeared on The Black Vault.

However, this MDR case was a little strange. In most cases, an MDR “success” is when redacted are lifted, even in part. An MDR “failure” is when nothing changes. This? Not sure what you call this, but additional redactions were ADDED, and not removed.

In a rather humorous (albeit frustrating) outcome, I highlighted both releases below so you can see what they felt the need to cover-up now vs. not cover up in the past.

Note: The below montage of images may be too small to read, depending on your monitor. Simply click on the pages individually to make them larger. Each page is side by side with its corresponding page from the old release to the new one.

Document Archive

The post DoD/CIA-NASA Agreement on NASA Reconnaissance Programs, 28 August 1963 first appeared on The Black Vault.

In November of 2021, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request to have the redacted information further reviewed.

The below, was the result, and additional information was released.

One particular section now declassified, talks about how NASA was hiding “Unclassified” information from the general public and they wanted to thwart future FOIA requests/questions.

Document Archive

Data and Information Release Committee of the Program Review Board Meeting Summary – August 10, 1977 [7 Pages, 4MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [3.85 MB]

The post Data and Information Release Committee of the Program Review Board Meeting Summary – August 10, 1977 first appeared on The Black Vault.

These documents were released by NASA through the Freedom of Information Act. In this video, I will explore some of the best nuggets from the release, which asked for a search of all e-mails from NASA’s Associate Administrator of Communications, Marc Etkind, that have UAP/UFO related keywords.

SHOW NOTES
———————–

Special thanks: GovernmentAttic – https://www.governmentattic.org/ 

Download the documents – https://www.governmentattic.org/43docs/NASAemailAACetkindUAP-2021.pdf

Black Vault Stories Referenced:

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson Scheduled To Receive Classified UAP Briefing August 17, 2021 – https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/nasa-administrator-bill-nelson-scheduled-for-uap-briefing-august-17-2021/

UAP Task Force Initiated Contact with NASA To Brief Them on UFOs; But They Won’t Say Why
– https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/uap-task-force-initiated-contact-with-nasa-to-brief-them-on-ufos-but-they-wont-say-why/

The post The UAP/UFO E-Mails of NASA’s Associate Administrator of Communications, Marc Etkind first appeared on The Black Vault.

This “Information Sheet” was created by NASA, and archived within the Department of Defense. It outlined how NASA would respond to the numerous UFO-related questions flowing into the White House. They tasked NASA to respond to them all.

Document Archive

NASA Information Sheet on UFOs – 197

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [652.60 KB]

The post NASA Information Sheet on UFOs – 1978 first appeared on The Black Vault.

Background

Back in late 1967/early 1968, NASA had transferred a cache of documents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The transmittal slip, and index of records, labeled them as, “NASA Fragology Files consisting of reports of space objects recovery, analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin.”

In 1996, NARA had told NASA in the letter shown below, that the boxes of material transferred were “lost,” and they were marked as such even going back to 1987. The hunt for these records even generated a lawsuit by Leslie Kean (Kean v. NASA), but the records were never found.

This page setup by The Black Vault, archives the records available, and new FOIA requests have been filed in May of 2021 to have new searches done and see if with new personnel, technology upgrades, and the passage of time; records can be found. It has happened before.

July 2021 NASA Release

In July of 2021, NASA released more than 220 pages of records on the Kean v. NASA lawsuit. This revealed numerous pages on Project Moon Dust, and the recovery of unknown fragments (most likely space debris / fallen satellites). However, what is interesting, is the Moon Dust related files that came up in my NASA request, which were Department of State records, did not come up in my FOIA request to the Department of State on Project Moon Dust. That, in itself, was a neat find, since Project Moon Dust files are hard to come by. (It should be noted, The Black Vault has not yet cross references other files released by DIA that yielded some Moon Dust files, though it does appear many of these records are not online.)

In addition to the Project Moon Dust and related files, NASA also released many of the communications in during the case with Kean and her attorneys. It was also revealed that despite those records surviving, an untold number of others were destroyed per NASA’s records retention schedules.

This page will be updated, when the above cases are complete.

Document Archive

Kean v. NASA

Court Documents [21 Pages, 0.2MB]

NASA Release – July 2021 – For ALL Records pertaining to the above lawsuit [222 Pages, 23MB]

During the course of the above NASA FOIA case, 13 pages were referred to the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.  All 13 pages were withheld [2 Pages, 0.1MB]

NARA Records

NASA’s “Fragology Files” – Space Object Recovery and Analysis Records [40 Pages, 2.5MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [2.05 MB]

In an attempt in 2021 to have NARA search again for the Fragology files, it failed. Per the letter below, you can see they attempted to see if the identifying accession number of 255-68A-2062, had a typo or was misidentified. However, seeking out portions of that number, also failed to find responsive records.

What is potentially new, is the fact that NARA seemingly confirms the “Fragology files” were never even transferred to them; not lost at NARA. I believe the going story was that the files were transferred decades ago, but were lost within NARA after the transfer. However, this letter, appears to now say they never got them in the first place.

Regardless of their true meaning or who truly lost them; the files are just gone.

The post NASA’s “Fragology Files” – Space Object Recovery and Analysis Records first appeared on The Black Vault.

Key Highlights:

1. Mission Objectives: The primary objectives of the Manned Venus Flyby mission are to extend human presence beyond Earth’s orbit, study the environment of Venus, and gather valuable data on interplanetary space travel. The mission aims to build on existing scientific knowledge of Venus and provide a foundation for future manned missions to other planets.
2. Spacecraft Design: The spacecraft for the mission would consist of two main modules: a command module for the astronauts and a support module containing the necessary supplies and equipment. The design would also include solar panels for power generation, communication systems, and a heat shield for protection during Venus flyby.
3. Trajectory and Mission Duration: The proposed mission would follow a free-return trajectory, allowing the spacecraft to return to Earth without propulsion after flying by Venus. The total mission duration would be around 410 to 420 days, including the time spent traveling to Venus, conducting scientific observations during the flyby, and returning to Earth.
4. Scientific Benefits: The Manned Venus Flyby mission would provide valuable data on the planet’s atmosphere, surface, and magnetic fields. Additionally, the mission would offer insights into the challenges of long-duration spaceflight, such as radiation exposure, human factors, and spacecraft performance.
5. Challenges and Risks: Some potential challenges for the mission include the need for advanced life support systems, protection from radiation, and the development of reliable communication systems. The report also acknowledges the risks associated with the mission, such as potential spacecraft failures, the psychological impact of long-duration spaceflight on astronauts, and the limited opportunities for mission aborts or emergency returns.

Conclusion: The Manned Venus Flyby report provides a detailed analysis of the mission’s objectives, spacecraft design, trajectory, and scientific benefits. Although there are considerable challenges and risks associated with the mission, it represents an important step in the expansion of human presence beyond Earth’s orbit and lays the groundwork for future manned missions to other planets. The insights gained from this mission would contribute to our understanding of Venus and help address the technical challenges of interplanetary space travel.

Document Abstract:

“This study is one of several conducted at Bellcomm and in Manned Space Flight whose purpose is to give guidance to the Apollo Applications Program’s technical objectives by focusing on a longer range goal. The assumed mission in this case is a three-man flyby of Venus launched in November, 1973 on a single standard Saturn V. The selected flight configuration includes a Command and Service Module similar in some respects to Apollo, an Environmental Support Module which occupies the adapter area and a spent S-IVB stage which is utilized for habitable volume and structural support of a solar cell electrical power system. The total injected weight, 106,775 lbs., is within the capability of a single Saturn V of the early 1970’s. The study is focused on the selection of subsystem technologies appropriate to long duration flight. The conclusions are reported in terms of the technical characteristics to be achieved as part of the Apollo Applications Program’s long duration objectives.”

Document Archive

Manned Venus Flyby (Proposal), February 1, 1967 [177 Pages, 5.2MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [5.28 MB]

The post Manned Venus Flyby (Proposal), February 1, 1967 first appeared on The Black Vault.

NASA began flight testing Monday with Joby Aviation’s all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft as part of the agency’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign. This testing runs through Friday, Sept.10, at Joby’s Electric Flight Base located near Big Sur, California. This is the first time NASA will test an eVTOL aircraft as part of the campaign. In the future, eVTOL aircraft could serve as air taxis for those in cities and surrounding areas around the country, adding another mode of transportation for moving people and goods.

NASA’s goal is to collect vehicle performance and acoustic data for use in modeling and simulation of future airspace concepts. This test will help identify gaps in current Federal Aviation Administration regulations and policies to help incorporate AAM aircraft into the National Airspace System. This multi-event campaign to advance airspace mobility in the U.S. will take place at multiple locations over several years.

“The National Campaign Developmental Testing is an important strategic step in NASA’s goals to accelerate the AAM industry timeline,” said Davis Hackenberg, NASA AAM mission integration manager. “These testing scenarios will help inform gaps in current standards to benefit the industry’s progress of integrating AAM vehicles into the airspace.”

During this round of testing, NASA will collect data from Joby’s eVTOL aircraft, which is intended to serve as a commercial passenger service in the future. Analyzing that data readies the AAM National Campaign to execute the first set of campaign tests, known as NC-1, slated for 2022, with more complex flight scenarios and other industry vehicles.

As the Joby aircraft flies planned test scenarios, the NASA team will collect information about how the vehicle moves, how the vehicle sounds, and how the vehicle communicates with controllers. Future partners will fly similar scenarios to evaluate their vehicle readiness.

The team will deploy the mobile acoustics facility and construct an array of more than 50 microphones to measure the acoustic profile of Joby’s aircraft in different phases of flight.

“NASA’s AAM National Campaign is critical to driving scientific understanding and public acceptance of eVTOL aircraft,” said JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby Aviation. “We’re incredibly proud to have worked closely with NASA on electric flight over the past 10 years and to be the first eVTOL company to fly as part of the campaign.”

Another element of the testing includes making sure external ranges participating in NC-1 meet the protocols for future testing by establishing a baseline to participate. The team will also test NASA’s flight safety and airworthiness processes to approve participants to fly in the campaign.

When fully integrated into the national airspace, AAM will provide an efficient and affordable system for passenger and cargo transportation, and other applications in the public interest. This system could include aircraft like package delivery drones, air taxis and medical transport vehicles.

AAM is an aviation system that encompasses developing and deploying aviation in innovative ways not typically seen today. The AAM National Campaign is managed by NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility project, which plans to be a community catalyst for developing and validating system-level concepts and solutions for AAM. The AAM project is a part of the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

The post NASA Begins Air Taxi Flight Testing with Joby first appeared on The Black Vault.

There are all sorts of things to talk about, and I am sure some of you may be most interested in some of the TV series appearing in the past couple weeks, such as the JJ Abrams Showtime docu-series; the Tucker Carlson documentary on Fox Nation; and much more.

So, come on in! No texting this time around, because in the past couple shows, it’s been near impossible to get to most of those. So, call-ins, super chats on YouTube, and random comments will be the only way!

SHOW NOTES

• NASA Administrator Bill Nelson Scheduled To Receive Classified UAP Briefing August 17, 2021
• U.S. Air Force Set To Enter The UFO Research Arena… Again?
• Air Force Spokespeople E-Mails on UFOs / UAPs
• FBI File: Bob Lazar’s United Nuclear

LIVE STREAM VERSION

The post Ep. #84 – LIVE (8/21/21): Black Vault FOIA Document Updates and OPEN LINES first appeared on The Black Vault.

NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson is scheduled to obtain a classified briefing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) tomorrow. This news, which comes from two documents released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and obtained by The Black Vault, was revealed within two Office of International and Interagency Relations (OIIR) “Weekly Update” e-mails sent on July 18th and July 25th of this year. Both updates outline a list of “Upcoming Activities” for Administrator Nelson and other NASA personnel, and both list a “Briefing to Administrator on Task Force Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” set for August 17. 

Details about the classified briefing are not listed within the document, but The Black Vault reached out to the Department of Defense (the UAP Task Force) and to NASA for a response. The Pentagon answered on behalf of both agencies:

“The UAPTF is providing a classified briefing on UAP to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” said Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough in an e-mail to The Black Vault. “During the course of its work, the UAPTF has reached out to organizations across DoD, the Intelligence Community, and the U.S. government. For security reasons, we will not detail the contributions of specific organizations to the UAPTF’s work, nor the areas discussed with every organization as part of the UAPTF’s investigations. It is worth noting, however, that NASA is an organization with broad scientific responsibilities, including atmospheric research, etc. Such information is vital to fully understanding the environment in which Navy aviators operate and the conditions that may have been present during any particular observation.”

Gough further confirmed the briefing was still scheduled for tomorrow, but declined to confirm that Nelson would, in fact, be there.

As reported in a previous story published by The Black Vault last month, NASA also received a briefing on UAPs back in September of 2020. This specific meeting involved various NASA officials including International Space Station (ISS) Program Manager Joel Montalbano; Director of the Export Control and Interagency Liaison Division Margaret Kieffer; Former Associate Administrator for Legislative Affairs Suzanne Gillen; and then Acting Associate Administrator for the Office of International and Interagency Relations, Mike Gold. This, also, was revealed by documents obtained through the FOIA.

###

Document Archive

UPDATE September 17, 2021

In another FOIA Case with NASA, in case 21-HQ-F-00660, one of the same records above was released but with numerous (b)(5) redactions. It is unclear why in one case they were released in full and in another it was redacted.

The said, it is archived here for reference:

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [1.81 MB]

The post NASA Administrator Bill Nelson Scheduled To Receive Classified UAP Briefing August 17, 2021 first appeared on The Black Vault.