NASA hopes new study helps bring UFO research into the mainstream

NASA wants to move the study of UAP off the scientific fringes and into the mainstream.

The agency has commissioned a panel to investigate UAP, a recent rebrand that is pushing out the more familiar term " unidentified flying object"

During a call with reporters today, agency officials said that the study would take about nine months to complete and cost no more than $100,000. Assessing the state of the UAP data landscape is the main goal.

The military is taking all hands on deck to understand unexplained phenomena.

The associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington said during the call that the study would focus on identifying available data, how to best collect future data and how NASA can use these data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward.

Take a field that is relatively poor and make it into a field that is much more data rich and therefore worthy of scientific investigation and analysis.

Zurbuchen said that NASA's research priorities include the hunt for alien life, investigating mysterious Cosmic objects and phenomena, and keeping American aircraft safe and secure. The first "A" in NASA is for Aeronautical, and UAP could be a threat to planes.

NASA is not afraid to put its name behind the effort to demystify UAP. Understanding UAP is important for national security according to the Department of Defense.

Zurbuchen said that in a traditional type of science environment, talking about some of these issues may be considered kind of selling out or talking about things that are not actual science. I don't like that. I think that the quality of science is more than just the outputs that come behind it, but also the questions we're willing to tackle with science.

NASA hopes that the work that the new panel will do will bring more and better information into scientists' databases.

There is a great deal of stigma associated with UAP among naval aviators and in the aviation community, according to Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA. David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York City, is the leader of the study.

Evans said that they hoped to remove some of the stigma associated with it by talking about it in the open. Increased access to data, more reports, more Sightings, et cetera, will result from that. We are trying to accomplish that with it.

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