For the first time in five decades, Congress held an open hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs.
The testimony from defense officials followed a nine-page report released last year, which investigated more than 140 instances of strange occurrences by fighter aircraft instruments and pilots. One of the incidents was a large, deflated balloon.
UAPs are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way, according to the chairman of the subcommittee.
Unexplained objects have fascinated and puzzled people for a long time, but have often been dismissed as pseudoscience or tabloid fodder. Some researchers say that the intelligence community needs to be investigated by scientists in order to find answers.
Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, told Insider that last year's report confirmed the existence of unexplained aerial phenomenon, but prompted more questions than answers.
The report did not include enough data to make a determination about the mystery objects.
Researchers like Haqq-Misra believe that the government should give scientists more access to data and allow inquiries to happen in the open, rather than behind closed doors, since UAPs have long inspired conspiracy theories.
Scientists like Haqq-Misra expect to have the information they really want when they are in a closed session after Tuesday's public hearing.
The potential for human error was included in the report. Haqq-Misra said UAPs should be studied with satellites, fast- tracking cameras, or audio sensors at locations where the unusual signals have been spotted.
It has been dismissed as pseudoscience for decades. Government officials decided to change the name of the phenomena to avoid the stigma associated with alien visitors. According to a planetary scientist at NASA, a scientific pursuit for answers and more transparency could help overcome the stigma.
There is a process to understand unknown phenomena, according to Kopparapu.
There are a growing number of privately funded research groups focused on the systematic study of unidentified aerial phenomena, such as Harvard's Galileo Project and UAPx. The Galileo Project is headed by a controversial astronomy professor who has been criticized for including outspoken UFO proponents without science background on the project.
I think this is a great opportunity for scientists to show the public how a scientific investigation can be done.
According to NASA, if we learn of UAPs, it would open up the door to new science questions. Exploring the unknown in space is at the center of who we are.
The Galileo Project is developing software to screen data coming from large telescopes for interstellar objects and developing a network of sky cameras to look for signs of alien life. The first of hundreds of cameras will be installed on the roof of Harvard College Observatory to record everything that moves through the sky.
We are moving away from a time when we were just thinking about them as tabloid news. If we want to understand them, we need to use the same technologies and scientific instruments that we use to study our everyday world around us.
Sightings of unexplained objects in the sky have raised questions about national security and even alien life. If these questions are not subjected to rigorous scientific inquiry, they will remain unanswered.
Haqq-Misra told Insider that branches of the military are acknowledging that there is a thing that they don't understand.
"Science should be the forefront in understanding this unknown phenomena, and I hope there is more interest from scientists," he said.
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