Salva Mubarak Senior Features Writer

NASA is over dismissing mysterious UFO sightings as unscientific and bizarre stories and is finally doing something about it. The space agency has announced that it has put together a team of experts who will conduct a review of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) and, essentially, tell NASA whether these UFOs need to be taken seriously or not.

We would not advise holding out for an invite to join the UFO research team, purely based on the hours of conspiracy theories you came up with after spending an unhealthy amount of time on Reddit. The 16-person team is already in place and is made up of experts across disciplines and also includes retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. Aside from Kelly, the team includes a bunch of astrophysicists, a science journalist, a technology-trend analyst, an aeronautics expert, an oceanographer, and more.

These experts will spend the next nine months analysing unclassified data on UAPs, particularly the peculiar sightings of objects behaving in a way that they usually don’t. Since it could be a matter of national security, everything around the project would remain hush-hush until the report is made public next year.

But what would this team be doing exactly?

Turns out, you don’t have to feel bad about not making it to the team yet. This team is NASA’s attempt to “lay the groundwork” for future studies on UFOs. The first phase will have the experts research and brainstorm on scientific explanations for these sightings so that it becomes viable for further research.

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement that, “Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA. Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”

There have been several studies and reports on UAPs and they have led the space agency to believe that there could be something to learn from them. According to the official website, NASA is “going in with an open mind because there’s a lot to learn”.

Do you think we’ll finally come close to uncovering the mystery behind why aliens are not visiting us?