NASA forms team to probe UFO/UAP sightings

Washington DC: The United States space organisation NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administrations) has formed a 16-member team to study the unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) or unidentified flying objects (UFOs), NDTV reported.

The agency released a press release saying that the formed team will start a study on Monday, spend nine months on previous UFO observations and determine how to analyse data on future events and will learn to understand the phenomena. The study will also assess whether the past sightings of UFOs were authentic.

Thomas Zurbuchen, an associate administrator at NASA, said that exploring the unknown space and the atmosphere of the Earth are the main areas NASA covers. The understanding of the available data on UAPs will help them to reach scientific conclusions on what is happening in the skies, he said.

"Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable," NDTV quoted Zurbuchen.

The NASA study team has professors, scientists, an oceanographer and others who study space. This includes NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Nadia Drake, a science journalist, the press release stated.

Further, the statement said that the study is designed to lay the foundation for future studies into the matter, that is, on the nature of UAPs. This will aid NASA as well as other organisations around the world. The team will analyse data from civilian government entities and commercial data, along with data from other sources.

The space agency had announced the development back in June, but it had said then that the lack of existing research on UAPs poses difficulty in drawing scientific conclusions on the events.

According to NASA, studies on UAPs are inevitable since it is a matter of air safety as well as national security. However, it adds that UFOs do not confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life.