NASA announces UFO study group members
NASA’s much-anticipated UFO study is about to begin, and we now know who will be conducting it.
In June, the space agency announced that it had commissioned a panel to study UFOs, or as they were recently renamed, “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP). The independent study will begin in the fall, cost less than $100,000 and take about nine months from start to finish, NASA officials said at the time.
Autumn is here and with it the start date of the study – at least almost. The panel will begin its work on Monday (October 24), NASA officials wrote in an update (opens in new tab) today (Oct. 21).
Related: NASA hopes the new study will help bring UFO research into the mainstream
The study does not aim to be the last word on UFOs. It will look at previously collected UAP observations (just the unclassified, sensitive military data) and focus on how they might be better organized and analyzed in the future to shed more light on mysterious sky observations.
“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy administrator of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters, in today’s update (opens in new tab).
“Understanding the data we have on unidentified aerial phenomena is crucial to help us make scientific conclusions about what’s happening in our skies,” he added. “Data is the language of scientists and makes the inexplicable explainable.”
We already knew that the study team will be led by astrophysicist David Spergel, President of the Simons Foundation, and that the NASA official orchestrating the effort is Daniel Evans, the Deputy Assistant Assistant Administrator for Research at the SMD.
But today’s update revealed the entire team. There will be 16 investigators from a variety of fields, from astronomy to oceanography and computer science to journalism. There’s even a former NASA astronaut in the group.
In addition to Spergel, the team includes (in alphabetical order):
- Anamaria Berea, associate professor of computational and data science at George Mason University, research fellow at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and researcher at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle;
- Federica Bianco, joint professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and the Urban Observatory;
- Paula Bontempi, Dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and Professor of Oceanography at URI;
- Reggie Brothers, operating partners at AE Industrial Partners in Boca Raton, Florida and former CEO and board member of BigBear.ai in Columbia, Maryland;
- Jen Buss, CEO of the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies in Arlington, Virginia;
- Nadia Drake, freelance science writer and writer at National Geographic;
- Mike Gold, Executive Vice President of Civil Space and External Affairs at Redwire in Jacksonville, Fla. and previously NASA Assistant Administrator for Space Policy and Partnerships;
- David Grinspoon, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and a frequent adviser to NASA on space exploration;
- Scott Kelly, former NASA astronaut, test pilot, fighter pilot and retired US Navy captain;
- Matt Mountain, President of the Association of Universities for Research and Astronomy and Telescope Scientist for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope;
- Warren Randolph, Deputy General Manager, Accident Investigation and Prevention Division for Aviation Safety, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA);
- Walter Scott, executive vice president and chief technology officer at space technology company Maxar;
- Joshua Semeter, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University and director of the school’s Center for Space Physics;
- Karlin Toner, acting executive director of the FAA’s Office of Aviation Policy and Plans and former director of global strategy for the FAA;
- Shelley Wright, associate professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
The above are abridged versions of the thumbnail bios included in today’s NASA update. You can read the full versions in this post (opens in new tab).
“NASA has brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, data and artificial intelligence practitioners, [and] Aerospace security professionals, each with a specific mission to tell us how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP,” Evans said in the same statement.
The team’s findings will be released to the public in mid-2023 when the study is complete, NASA officials said.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaelwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
