NASA is about to release the findings of a much-hyped report on “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP). So, what can we expect from the announcement?
The briefing will take place at 10:00 EDT (14:00 UTC) on Thursday, September 14, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington DC. You’ll be able to watch a live stream of the discussion in the video player below.
Don’t expect any mind-blowing revelations like the remains of (almost certainly fake) alien bodies recently displayed in Mexico’s parliament.
The findings will come from an independent study group that was commissioned by NASA in 2022, comprised of 16 scientific, aeronautical, and data experts led by astrophysicist David Spergel. In the words of NASA, the study group aims to “examine UAP from a scientific perspective and create a roadmap for how to use data and the tools of science to move our understanding of UAP forward.”
NASA has collected "about 800 events over about 27 years," the report's authors reportedly said in May. Approximately 2.5 percent of those events, they said, "display signatures that could be described as anomalous.”
However, it’s unlikely the announcement will introduce any new sightings or show any new media of UAPs. It’s expected that the report is likely to outline some new protocols that will help the agency gather data on UAP observations in the future.
The announcement marks an important milestone for the agency in its recent efforts to take UAP sightings more seriously. Recent years have seen a number of high-profile sightings by the US military, yet the drive to understand the phenomena has been hampered by erratic and low-quality data.
This latest push, it seems, is an attempt to create an organized system in which UAP sightings can be properly documented, studied, and understood.
“[The report] aims to inform NASA on what possible data could be collected in the future to shed light on the nature and origin of UAP. The report is not a review or assessment of previous unidentifiable observations,” NASA said in a brief statement about the announcement.
“There are currently a limited number of high-quality observations of UAP, which make it impossible to draw firm scientific conclusions about their nature,” the agency added.
