NASA Learns the Ugly Truth About UFOs

At a meeting in NASA headquarters yesterday, the public had some blunt questions about UFOs, or, as the government now calls them, “unexplained anomalous phenomena.” A NASA spokesperson summarized them aloud: “What is NASA hiding, and where are you hiding it? How much has been shared publicly? Has NASA ever cut the live NASA TV feed away from something? Has NASA released all UAP evidence it has ever received? What about NASA astronauts—do they have an NDA or clearance that does not allow them to speak about UAP sightings? What are the science overlords hiding?” In short: Are you guys lying to everyone?

There was some gentle laughter among the panelists, whom NASA had convened on the subject. No, NASA “has never intentionally cut a live feed to hide anything,” a senior agency official said. A retired astronaut who worked at NASA for 20 years chimed in: “There was never any formal or informal discussions at all about UAPs or UFOs or anyone reporting anything that would suggest something from beyond our planet.” An astrobiologist—the kind of scientist whose job revolves around finding extraterrestrial life—said that scientists are a “rebellious” type, and if someone told him to keep a secret as big as this, he’d want to spill.

The group had spent the past several months examining reports of strange sightings in the sky, and yesterday’s hours-long event was its first (and only) public meeting. The NASA-organized committee, a mix of scientists and industry experts, did not make any dramatic pronouncements. The main takeaway was what we’ve heard all along. “Many events have conventional explanations,” David Spergel, an astrophysicist who chairs the committee, told reporters. (See: balloons.) “There remain events that we do not understand,” he said, “but these events tend to be characterized by poor-quality, limited data.” Ultimately, the group found UAP data “insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event,” Spergel said.

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But in doing this work, NASA has discovered a different truth: Talking about UFOs can be a nasty business. If you publicly investigate, contemplate, or even breathe about UFOs, you will probably be harassed on the internet. Several of the panelists “have been subjected to online abuse due to their decision to participate on this panel,” Dan Evans, the NASA official assigned to the committee, said at the outset of the meeting. “A NASA security team is actively addressing this issue.’ (Evans later told me that there were “specific attacks on the character of individuals.”) And then there are the accusatory questions and distrust from the public. The agency has finally opened the doors to serious discussions about UFOs, and what it’s gotten instead is seriously toxic.

NASA has historically steered clear of anything involving UFOs, leaving the matter up to other federal agencies, which operated clandestine UFO programs for military and national-security purposes. The world’s top space agency was more concerned with searching for alien life far beyond Earth’s atmosphere—around planets orbiting other stars, for example—than weird things in our own sky. But UFOs have been popping up in the news quite a bit in recent years, thanks to newspaper reports on those secret government programs and the resulting congressional hearings. But last year, NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, seemed to succumb to the pull of UFOs and directed the agency to form a panel of experts.

Spergel and the other members of the committee stressed that their goal was not to conduct an exhaustive investigation of every frame of grainy footage but to provide a “roadmap” for NASA that details how the agency could contribute to the future study and analysis of UFOs. The panel did not have access to any classified data either. That approach was bound to provoke those who believe that some reported UFOs have extraterrestrial origins, and that the government—and perhaps now NASA too—is hiding that fact.

Read: What the UFO discussion really needs

Despite the high emotions surrounding UFOs, nearly all public meetings on the subject are quite anticlimactic, and distinctly lacking in someone unfurling a giant sign from the ceiling that declares, once and for all, WE FOUND THE ALIENS. I’ve covered the space industry for years, and to me, the most surprising result was how absorbed NASA seemed to be in the discussion. Last year, a NASA official said a dedicated UAP-research effort would pose a “reputational risk” for the agency. But yesterday, this committee was advising NASA to approach UFOs in a way that the agency has not done in its nearly 65-year existence. Instead of opting out, the panelists said that NASA should help reduce the stigma surrounding UFOs; one expert from the Federal Aviation Administration said that the agency should “leverage its brand image” to do so. Evans, the NASA official, was also on board, saying, “It’s now our collective responsibility to investigate these occurrences with the rigorous scientific scrutiny that they deserve.”

The NASA panel must now draw up a formal report to deliver to agency leaders this summer. One panelist said that NASA should set up its own UFO office, a modest but dedicated force, to collect and archive data alongside other, more serious programs in the Defense Department. But first, NASA would probably like everyone to stop getting worked up over aliens. Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science missions, said yesterday that “harassment only leads to further stigmatization of the UAP field, significantly hindering scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter.” Indeed, the road to understanding the nature of UFOs will be paved with abuse and, as NASA now knows, an ungodly number of emails. “I think every one of the 16-strong panel, plus myself, receives emails on a daily basis of all sorts concerning this subject,” Evans told me. Some of them are terrible, and, unfortunately, there’s nothing anomalous about that.