Here's What NASA Knows About UFOs

NASA's group actively studying UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena, held its first public meeting Wednesday morning, discussing the idea of unidentified craft flying through skies around the globe. Though not much was revealed entirely, the biggest takeaway from the meeting is that the group revealed it has "absolutely no convincing evidence" of extraterrestrial involvement in recent UAP sightings. In short, the group revealed it simply needs more data to make accurate conclusions on what some of the sightings are. 

"We steer between the rocks and the cyclone," panel chairman David Spergel said during the meeting. "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, everything can be explained."

A significant part of the meeting went to the discussing of reducing the stigma surrounding the discussion of UAP—or in layman's terms, UFOs.

"Despite NASA's extensive efforts to reduce the stigma, the origins of the UAP remain unclear," Spergel added. "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 is we need high-quality data."

Still, members of the group do realize the stigma surrounding UAPs and UFOs often have the public thinking of aliens and the like, something team member David Grinspoon addressed head-on.

"We haven't seen any evidence that indicates that UAPs have anything to do with extraterrestrial phenomena," he said. "If the data leads us to realize that it does ... 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 there's a connection between UAPs and extraterrestrial life."

The group is expected to file its full report later this year, which will hopefully answer some outstanding questions regarding UAP sightings the government is actively investigating.

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