At Least:NASA plans to join UFO research efforts with open mind @TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews NASA plans to join UFO research efforts with open mind The study would try to scientifically examine identifying available data, ascertain how to best collect future data, and how NASA can use these data to move scientific understanding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena UFOs almost certainly are not alien visitors buzzing Earth’s skies, but NASA is nonetheless financing a study that will look at unexplained sightings with an open mind. During a presentation on Thursday to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said the study would try to scientifically examine what the federal government calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. The study, which is to cost less than $100,000 and begin in the fall, “will 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,” Zurbuchen said during a telephone news conference on Thursday afternoon. Zurbuchen said that examining UFO reports could be “high-risk, high-impact kind of research,” possibly uncovering some entirely new scientific phenomenon — or possibly coming up with nothing new or interesting at all. For years a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, ran a little-noticed group within the Pentagon called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The Pentagon has said the program was shut down in 2012, but backers of the program said its work continued. In 2021, the Pentagon announced it would form a new task force to look at the issue, after a congressionally-mandated report found there was insufficient data for many incidents that had been observed.