Strangest fact
The space agency that UFO stories most often accuse of hiding aliens put an astronaut on a panel to study UFOs in public, and the panel's main complaint was that there is not enough good evidence to study.
On June 9, 2022, NASA announced an independent study of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP: observations in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena. The panel of 16 was chaired by the astrophysicist David Spergel of the Simons Foundation and included the retired astronaut Scott Kelly, scientists, a science journalist, and officials from the Federal Aviation Administration. It used only unclassified data, held a public meeting on May 31, 2023, and released its final report on September 14, 2023.
The report states: To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP.
It adds that at this point there is no reason to conclude that existing UAP reports have an extraterrestrial source,
and describes extraterrestrial life as the hypothesis of last resort.
The main problem, it says, is that the data needed to explain most sightings often do not exist.
The panel recommended that NASA use its satellites, data skills and partnerships to build better UAP data, encourage reporting by commercial pilots and the public, and reduce the stigma that discourages reports. It noted that the Pentagon's UAP office, AARO, had by then collected more than 800 reported events.
On the day of release, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson named Mark McInerney, previously NASA's liaison to the Defense Department on UAP, as the agency's first Director of UAP Research. NASA's Daniel Evans told reporters that some of the threats and the harassment have been beyond the pale
toward some panelists, which is why the agency had at first planned not to name the new director.