Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Report from NASA Transcript

Hello and welcome. We are here today at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, for a press briefing on a report from an independent study team on unidentified anomalous phenomena. We have four speakers here today. We have Bill Nelson, our NASA Administrator; Nicky Fox, the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate; Dan Evans, the Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for Research within the Science Mission Directorate; and David Spergel, who is the President of the Simons Foundation, and was also the Chair of this particular independent study team.

(00:38)
I will ask everybody in the room to please silence your cellphones. We will get started with everybody giving a few opening remarks, and then we will take questions. We’ll take questions both in the room and then from the phones.

(00:53)
For now, I will hand it over to the administrator.

Thanks so much, and thanks for coming today. NASA searches for the unknown in air and space; it’s in our DNA. From digging on Mars with the Perseverance rover, and those little titanium tubes that we intend to go back and pick up, digging in a dry lake bed near the mouth of a river. Now We’re going up to the top of the cliff where the scientists feel that there could be the best examples of if there were life there millions of years ago. Whether we’re dealing with Perseverance or the James Webb Space Telescope, which searches for exoplanets with signs of habitability, we are looking for signs of life, past and present; and it’s in our DNA to explore, and to ask why things are the way they are.

(02:13)
In June of last year, NASA commissioned an independent study team to examine unidentified anomalous phenomena, and we did so with a few goals in mind: first, to examine how NASA can use our expertise and instruments to study UAP from a scientific perspective; second, shift the conversation about UAP from sensationalism to science; and to make sure that whatever we find or whatever we recommend, to make sure that information is shared transparently around the world.

(03:05)
There’s a global fascination with UAP. On my travels, one of the first questions I often get is about these sightings, and much of that fascination is due to the unknown nature of it. Think about it, most UAP sightings result in very limited data that makes it even more difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UAP. And so this independent study team brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, data and artificial intelligence experts, aerospace safety specialist, all with a specific charge from me, which is to tell how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP, and this is the first time that NASA has taken concrete action to seriously look into UAP. And this independent study team was just that: independent.

(04:25)
Now NASA has a statutory authority to look for life in the universe. When you think of the universe, and especially what we have learned from the James Webb Space Telescope, how vast that it is, we knew before; and it was a NASA scientist, Dr. John Mather, who got the Nobel that determined that the universe was 13.8 billion years old. And over the years, particularly accelerated in the last century, we have an understanding that of course ours is not the only galaxy, and there are billions and billions of galaxies; and each of those galaxies, including our own, have billions and billions of stars.

(05:29)
With the James Webb looking at the exoplanets, we are now beginning to discover, and somewhere out there we will discover, another medium-size stony planet around a medium-size sun or star at just the right distance not too far, not too close, with a tilt in its axis that rotates, that has carbon, that will have a habitable atmosphere. If you ask me do I believe there’s life in a universe that is so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is, my personal answer is yes. But I asked some of our scientists. As a matter of fact, the Washington Post Editorial Board asked us to come down to the question, “What is the mathematical probability that there is life out there in the universe?” and if you calculate in billions of stars, in billions of galaxies, that there’s replicated what I just said, another stony planet, the answer was, what’s the likelihood? At least a trillion. That’s from our scientists.

(07:17)
We start this without any preconceived notions, but understanding that we’re in a world of discovery; and we, NASA, have taken for the first time concrete action to seriously look into UAP, and this independent study team is exactly that: it’s independent. They work to develop recommendations about how NASA could better examine them from a scientific perspective, and the top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn. The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don’t know what these UAP are. That’s why I’m announcing that NASA has appointed a NASA Director of UAP Research. They are being tasked with developing and overseeing the implementation of NASA’s vision for UAP research. We will use NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP. We will use AI and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies, as we have been searching the heavens, and we’ll continue to search the heavens for habitability, and NASA will do this transparently.

(09:06)
While today is a significant step for NASA, it’s certainly not our final step, and we’re going to share more with you.

(09:14)
I want to introduce you to Dr. Nicky Fox, who is the Head of our Science Mission Directorate.

(09:22)
Nicky?

Good morning and thank you so much, Administrator Nelson. It’s always tough to follow Bill. He’s such a great speaker. But I want to thank the independent study team for their amazing service on the study, and for their continued contributions towards the advancement of our nation’s understanding of unidentified anomalous phenomena.

(09:52)
UAP, as Bill just eloquently said, are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries, and it’s really due to the limited number of high-quality data that surrounds such incidents and often renders them unidentifiable. While there are numerous eyewitness accounts and visuals associated with UAP, they’re not consistent, they’re not detailed, and they’re not curated observations that can be used to make definitive scientific conclusions about the nature and the origin of UAP. The language of scientists is data, and data points towards a scientific conclusion to what the nature and the origin of UAP could be.

(10:37)
That leads us to why we are here today. The independent study team’s report is now public, and it can be found at science.nasa.gov/uap. While NASA is still working to evaluate the report and to assess the independent study team’s finding and recommendations, NASA is committed to immediately contributing to the federal government’s unified UAP effort; and as you heard, we have appointed a Director of UAP Research. In their role, they will centralize communications, resources, and data analytical capabilities across the federal government to establish a robust database for the evaluation of any future data. Additionally, our Director of UAP Research will also leverage NASA’s expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and space-based observation tools that will support and enhance the broader government initiative into UAP. They will serve as NASA’s point of contact for government entities, but especially for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO, and this will ensure our coordinated efforts and effective communication channels.

(11:59)
Beyond our Director of UAP Research, NASA will also advance citizen reporting by working with the public and commercial pilots to collect a broader set of data, to add to the vast data repositories to not only contribute to a broader, more reliable data set for future UAP incidents, but to also contribute to the de-stigmatization of the important study of UAPs.

(12:27)
With that, it is my great pleasure to hand over to Dr. Dan Evans, who is the NASA official responsible for supporting this amazing study.

Good morning. I’d like to begin by expressing my sincere thanks to NASA Administrator, Bill Nelson, for directing this study. We at NASA believe that understanding UAP is vital for several reasons. First and foremost, it provides an opportunity for us to expand our understanding of the world around us. At NASA, we are committed to charting the uncharted, so this work aligns with who we are. Secondly, this study aims to enhance situational awareness. The presence of UAP raises serious concerns about the safety of our skies; and it’s this nation’s obligation to determine whether these phenomena pose any potential risks to airspace safety. Let’s not forget that the first A in NASA is aeronautics. By understanding the nature of UAP, we can ensure that our skies remain a safe space for all.

(13:47)
Administrator Nelson directed us to put together an independent and external team of world-leading experts to produce a report containing a roadmap, with a series of recommendations that describe how NASA could best help in the cross-government response to UAP. Months of meticulous fact finding, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and scientific rigor gave the team insights that will greatly enhance our nation’s understanding of UAP going forward. The team’s report, now available on NASA’s website, stands as a testament to NASA’s and the team’s commitment to transparency, to the power of science, and to the unwavering quest for knowledge.

(14:36)
We at NASA believe that studying UAP represents an exciting step forward in our journey to uncover the mysteries of the world around us. By embracing a scientific lens, we have ensured that our work is evidence-based and data-driven. And by valuing transparency and openness, we have aimed to foster trust and collaboration

… aberration with the public.

(15:02)
I’d like to conclude by extending my deepest gratitude to the team for their incredible dedication and service. Their efforts have been instrumental, and I truly appreciate the expertise and commitment that each of them have brought to this endeavor.

(15:19)
And with that, I’ll pass over to Dr. David Spergel who chaired our study.

First and foremost, I’d like to extend our sincere gratitude to the NASA administrator for entrusting us with this pivotal study. Your faith in our capabilities has been a driving force behind the panel’s approach.

(15:49)
The panel’s comprehensive study into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP, has led to several crucial findings and I’d like to elucidate on our methodology and those findings this morning.

(16:04)
We began by rigorously assessing the current state of UAP data. Our goal was not to repeat the work of the AARO, but to understand the nature of the reports. Our goal was to produce a roadmap for NASA to contribute to the understanding of the nature of UAP events.

(16:23)
We looked at NASA’s assets. While they provide a comprehensive picture of the ocean, the earth’s surface and atmosphere for studying our evolving planet, they typically do not have the resolution needed for UAP events. However, by providing data on environmental conditions, they can compliment other data on UAP.

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The current approach to UAP data collection has led to a limited sample of events and limited data. Stigma has limited reporting by pilots, both civilian and military, so we know there’s missing data.

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For its analysis and other areas, NASA always takes a scientific approach of systematic data collection that involves calibrating instruments, multiple measurements and ensuring SIR metadata. Most UAP events lack this quality of data.

(17:23)
One of NASA’s contribution to the broader governmental effort is to bring these methodologies to create a dataset that’s both reliable and extensive. And once we have a large sample of well-characterized events, AI and ML tools, which are proving to be powerful in so many other applications, will likely prove helpful in identifying interesting anomalies.

(17:52)
It is essential to clarify, based on our current findings and methodology, that we find no evidence to suggest that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin. Our focus in understanding the phenomenon, however, regardless of the source and previous work from the AARO has shown that most events are explainable as planes, balloons, drones, weather phenomenon, and instrument features. And in any search for interesting anomalies, the first step is to eliminate the chaff of conventional events before moving on to identify novel phenomena. In this, the public’s role cannot be overstated. The panel envisioned a framework that leverages crowdsourcing, possibly via smartphone applications to capture a broader spectrum of data, ensuring more eyes and ears on the ground.

(18:51)
Lastly, we delved into the safety concerns UAP present within US airspace. By integrating UAP collection within our current aviation reporting system, the panel believes we can provide insights into potential safety risks. NASA can reduce the stigma associated with pilots reporting anomalies and fundamentally by studying events we don’t understand we advance our understanding.

(19:18)
So in conclusion, with a rigorous methodology, collaborative efforts, public engagement, NASA can be a key player in the whole of government approach to understanding UAP. Thank you.

Thank you so much to all of our speakers. We will start taking questions.

(19:43)
For those in the room, we have a microphone over here that we would ask you to speak into. We will also be alternating with questions from those on the phone line. For those of you who are in the phone line, please press star one to get onto the queue. We will try to answer as many as we can today. We’ll see how it goes.

(20:04)
Please, sir.

Thank you very much. This is directed to Mr. Nelson. Thank you for being here. Two quick questions. One is how can we make the determination of what something isn’t when we don’t know what it is? And B, after a careful review of the data, if it’s determined that some, underlining the word some 10 times, UFOs or UAP originate from a non-human intelligence, what’s the plan to disclose that to the public?

And can you identify yourself please?

James Fox. Thank you.

I’m sorry. And what outlet?

Independent Media. Thank you.

Well, let me repeat.

It’s on.

Let me repeat what I said. I think it’s important that you hear this word for word. The NASA Independent Study Team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don’t know what these UAP are.

(21:14)
The mission of NASA is to find out the unknown. I’ve said several times in my comments here today that we NASA deal openly and we will be transparent on this. And we’re trying to address the question of there’s so much concern that there’s something locked up classified and that the American government is not being open. Well, we are the American government and we are open and we’re going to be open about this.

(21:54)
We don’t, again, I’m going to repeat that statement, but we don’t know what these UAP are, but we’re going to try to find out.

Thank you very much. And is there a plan in place if it is determined that some of them represent or originate from a non-human intelligence to tell the public? Is there a plan?

If we are what I said we intend to be, which is transparent, you bet your boots we will say that. And I’ve tried to set the table for you by telling you what I personally believe in a universe that is so vast that could there be a replication of life on earth elsewhere in another solar system that is so big? Of course I believe that. The distances, it would have to be a very advanced civilization. The distances, light years, hundreds of light years, billions of light years, but whatever we find we’re going to tell you.

Thank you very much.

Great. And we’ll move on to the next question. Please do identify yourself.

Thanks. This is Joey Roulette from Reuters. A question for Bill Nelson or any of the other panelists. So you’ve appointed a director of UAP research. Have you named someone to that role? And what kind of investment are you considering making in this? Is this going to be a new program office? Have you thought of funding figures, et cetera? Thanks.

Yes, we’ve already appointed the person. They’ve been working there for a while now during this study to help be a point of contact. And any budget discussions, of course, are part of a very intricate federal budget request, and so they’re not something that we discuss openly. But we will certainly look at what resources need to be allocated.

Can you name the official who’s in the role?

We will not give his name out, no.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. We’ll take another one from in the room.

Hello, Dan Rivers from British broadcaster ITV News. I heard the word stigma mentioned several times, that you want to remove the stigma. Is your message to pilots and other people that this is no longer the preserve of cranks and that you won’t be laughed at and that you will take them seriously? Is that the takeaway?

That is exactly the message. At NASA, we are scientists. We love data, we love all data. And if there is something that needs to be reported and we want people to be able to feel that they can report that.

(24:46)
We spoke in the open hearing that we had here just a few months ago. Dan, remind me when it was?

May 31st.

May 31st. And we actually talked then about we wanted to remove the stigma and we also did not tolerate any of the abuse that some of our members of the panel were receiving, particularly on social media for doing this really important scientific study.

(25:08)
So absolutely we want pilots, and as Bill said, both private pilots, commercial pilots, military pilots to feel that if they see something, they need to report it.

I want to say, and I want to repeat the way I said it. We want to shift the conversation about UAPs from sensationalism to science.

I think of this in terms of the signs we see around for security, which say if you see something, say something. I think in this context we would summarize it as if you see something, collect high quality data on it because then we can learn.

If I may, I just noticed in the report the GoFast incident was one that was picked out and that had been held up as an example of a very credible sighting that you seem to be pouring doubt on. Can you just talk to that?

We looked at that as one example. And I think this is something that AARO has actually done a very good job of, of going through the events. And most events are going to turn out, even if there are some events that in the end turn out to be something novel, most events are going to turn out to be conventional things, balloons, airplanes, and so on.

(26:33)
I think of the process of discovery of anomalies as looking for a needle in a haystack. And if you want to find a needle in a haystack, you’ve got two choices. Either you know exactly what the needle looks like and you design a very good filter to look for the needle, it’s called match filtering in sort of AI work, machine learning signal processing, or you don’t know what you’re looking for. And with anomalies, that’s really the case we’re in. We’re looking for things we don’t understand.

(27:08)
So if you want to find something strange in a haystack, you better know exactly what hay looks like and you better be able to characterize that really well. And that’s why in a process like this, and this is something that I think we bring to this as we look for anomalies, is you need to know what typical regular things look like under all conditions. You need to know what balloons look like when pilots see them under unusual conditions so that you can eliminate those events.

(27:39)
And that’s why in identifying anomalies, understanding the normal is a very important part of it and understanding that under different observing conditions and collecting data at a uniform way. This is what we do when we study anomalies in space science or other areas of science. And what we’re trying to do is bring this approach to this field by saying, collect high quality data, understand the normal events and that’s how we move things forward.

Thank you.

We’ll move on to the next question, please.

Hello, I’m [inaudible 00:28:20] from BBC News. Just to follow up on the stigma question, UAP, that term has been used in part to de-stigmatize UFOs. The fact is most people use UFOs. Most of the American public, most of the world use that term. So I wonder how much is the stigma still a problem for you and what are you practically doing about it, really, to convince people?

(28:45)
And my second, very quick question, in your report I noticed that you said AI is a very essential tool for identifying rare occurrences. Yesterday we were at this big AI summit where you had a hundred senators meeting all the big tech tycoons, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg. And speaking to some senators afterwards, they said, “We are concerned about AI. We need it to be regulated.” Does that concern you? Are you worried that it might hamper your work?

(29:11)
Thank you very much.

Well, two big questions. First of all, do I personally believe that AI needs to have some boundaries? The answer to that for our existentialism, yes. Can you do that within the appropriate bounds so that, as I said in my remarks, that we’re going to utilize AI as one of the tools as we search for what is an answer to the UAP? And so, no, I don’t think that any attempts

… that the Congress has underway to try to write a law that would appropriately put guardrails around AI for other reasons, is any way going to inhibit us from utilizing the tools of AI to help us in our quest on this specific issue. Now, what was your other question?

Just how do you de-stigmatize the whole thing? Because I know you call it UAPs, but people don’t refer it to in that way.

Yeah. Well, there’s a mindset. We all are entertained by Indiana Jones in the Amazon and finding the crystal skull. So there’s a lot of folklore out there. That’s why we entered the stage, the arena to try to get into this from a science point.

I think you can blame the X-Files for a loss of this as well.

That possibly too. But just remember what I said. We, NASA are trying to shift it from sensationalism to science.

Okay, thank you very much.

Yes, ma’am.

And we do have a long line in the room but I want to give a couple chances to some people on the phone line. So I’m going to go to the phone for our first question there. Please do introduce yourself and ask a question. On the phone, can you hear me?

My first question is from Marcia Dunn with the Associated Press. Your line is open.

Yes. Hi, Marcia Dunn, AP. I’m already receiving emails on Area 51 and Roswell. So I would like to ask Mr. Spergel, how much were you and your fellow panel members hassled or bombarded by this sort of thing during the course of your study? And for NASA, are you not naming the director of UAP research for this very reason so that they’re not hassled and bombarded by the French element? Thanks.

No, I would divide emails and tweets into two types. There’s some where people honestly are curious about things they’ve seen, they’ve heard. There are things that are hard to respond to like my uncle who’s dead saw something strange and you get a report. And that’s not useful but that’s harmless. On the other hand, one of the things that happened during the study, and this may be part of a bigger discussion of cultural behavior on social media where people behave badly and I would say harassed some of our panel members and that I think was very inappropriate behavior, behavior one doesn’t want to see. Sadly I think it’s part of a deeper problem when people somehow feel on the web, on social media, they can be nasty and hostile and sadly some of our panel members experienced that.

Yeah, I would just simply add to that to say that not only were some of the things that our panel members received during the course of this study simple trolling, some of them actually rose to actual threats. And as a result we at NASA take the sanctity of the scientific process and the security and safety of our team extremely seriously. And yes that’s in part why we are not splashing the name of our new director out there because science needs to be free. Science needs to undergo a real and rigorous and rational process and you need the freedom of thought to be able to do that. Some of the threats and the harassment have been beyond the pale, quite frankly, towards some of our panelists. And yes, it’s important that science be free as part of that process.

Thank you so much. We’ll go to another question on the phone please. Please go ahead and introduce yourself.

My next question comes from Tom Clarke with Sky News London. Your line is open.

Oh, hi there. Thank you very much for taking my question. I want to understand whether how much, you won’t give us an idea of money but how many assets or new research programs will be devoted to this by the administration? Because it strikes me that although the argument for aviation safety is clear, there are other departments and agencies responsible for that particular thing. And as the report concludes, the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial explanations or truly scientific explanations for many of these phenomena is very, very small, shouldn’t NASA devote its research budgets and its efforts to those much more likely and tangible signs of extraterrestrial life through things like the [inaudible 00:35:31] space telescope or extrasolar planet detection?

Yeah, thank you for the question. So yes, obviously we don’t discuss budget openly but we are committed to supporting the whole of government study into UAP. All of our data are open. In fact, if you look at the report, you’ll see a very large sort of background material or supplemental material in there because we literally released everything because that’s what we do at NASA. We do have our key agency goals. We have obviously our goals in the science mission directorate, our themes that we follow and one of those as the administrator described is the search for life elsewhere. We do that and he described the research beautifully. I think he may be going for my job actually, but he described the research so well that what we need to find is a rocky planet around a hospitable star that isn’t too violent, that is in just that right place that has signatures of water and signatures of carbon, so the building blocks of life.

(36:39)
And we continue to strive to do that. We do that with the James Webb Telescope. We’ll be doing that when we launch the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope that even has a coronagraph around it to block out the light of the neighboring stars and really let us look at those possible planets. And then beyond that, the next big telescope recommended by the astrophysics decadal is, is the Habitable Worlds Observatory, actually a mission designed to look for hospitable and find like Earth 2.0 in another stellar system. And so they really are in the forefront of our goals at NASA. So thanks so much for the question.

I’m going to ask-

Just to jump in to clarify something, will you be devoting any new resource or research projects to this particular aim then given that’s where the interesting questions really are, should NASA spend time and budget pursuing the much less likely task of finding extra signs of extraterrestrial life in small objects within or close to the earth’s atmosphere?

So most of our… I mean, obviously our instruments are designed to look for the phenomena that we study at NASA. If any of our data are useful, if any of our data are applicable, then we absolutely will be devoting that and turning that over through our liaison to the whole of government approach. We are not at this time intending to design a mission to do this. That is not part of our kind of overarching NASA direction. We are looking at providing some research support. So if somebody wants to write a research proposal, send it in through the regular channels, we will be looking for ways to do that. And we also talked about supporting the citizen science and the broader repository of data. Dan, do you want to add to that?

NASA’s data are free and publicly accessible for the entire world to download and we pride ourselves on that fact. And it’s this openness of data and our approach, which is why we’re all here today. To answer your specific question about devoting research budgets to the potentially truly interesting ones. Well, I think as David said, you have to understand the chaff in order to really understand and pinpoint the potentially interesting ones. Okay? So we are in such a data poor regime at the moment that we need to turn it into a data rich one to do that, and we employ NASA’s assets, many other partners’ assets as well in that quest.

And if your questions suggests, and I do not know that it does, but if it suggests that NASA ought to keep its nose out of this, well, let me tell you, NASA is not a place that’s going to hide its head in the sand. Now, is there interest in this phenomenon now at other agencies? In my previous life in the Senate, I was privy to talk to the Navy pilots and to see the video of what they encountered off the coast of California in 2004. That was in a classified setting then. But this is now and you have now seen that video and you have heard from those former Navy pilots. Is that of a concern to the Department of Defense? Of course it is. And therefore we’re going to continue our search from a scientific point of view. It’s going to be if those other agencies continued their search. We’re going to be glad to join in with them, but our stuff is going to be open.

Great. I’m going to take one more from the phone before we go back to the floor. We have a lot of questions. I’m going to hope we can stick to one per person and see how many we can get through. So one more from the phone please.

Our next question comes from Jeff Faust with SpaceNews. Your line is open.

Hi. I know the press release states that NASA is still evaluating the independent study teams report in his recommendations. Does NASA plan to publish a formal response to the report in its recommendations? And if so, what timeline can we expect to see that?

So let me give you a quick preview about how this works. So we have only very, very recently received the report and what you have seen today in our press release represents our initial actions in recognition of the urgency of this matter. And yes, we will be following up as appropriate with additional actions, but of course we need additional time to fully ingest the recommendations and act on them in light of budget and many other priorities. But we’ll be announcing more in the future.

Great, thank you. Please, back to the room. Identify yourself too please.

Good morning. Sam Cabral with BBC News Digital. We’ve been talking a lot about since shift to from sensationalism to science today. Has NASA been in touch with the Mexican authorities about the rather sensational revelations earlier this week of two allegedly non-human corpses? And what if any importance do you attach to these discoveries?

I think David had to prep for that one.

Well, this is something that I know I’ve only seen on Twitter. So when you have unusual things, you want to make data public. I think of this as like NASA has one of the most valuable samples from outer space, lunar rocks. What do we do? We make them available to any scientists who want to work on this. We don’t know the nature of those samples that were shown in front of them. If I was the Mexican government, I would, our recommendation to the Mexican government, that’s not our charge here, we’re doing this for NASA. My recommendation was, if you have something strange, make samples available to the world scientific community and we’ll see what’s there.

I’ll just add, so one of the main goals of what we’re trying to do here today is to move conjecture and conspiracy towards science and sanity. And you do that with data, as David says, and that’s the whole purpose of this study and this roadmap.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Brandi Vincent from DefenseScoop. Thank you all for doing this. I actually have two lines of questions, if it’s okay. First for Ms. Fox, what’s, the timeline and immediate actions that NASA is pursuing specifically with Arrow now that the report has been completed? And what mechanisms are NASA and DOD really using to share information and collaborate securely? And do you see more coming? And then separately for Mr. Spergel, I noticed in the final report a lot of the images and media that were added were from DOD, snapshots that we’d previously seen from DOD data, not much from FAA, if anything, not from other agencies. Can you speak to why that is and what all you used beyond DOD to inform your report?

Dr. Fox, Dr. Spergel, I’ll pass to you guys.

Sure. So yes, our immediate actions, I think there was such a lot in those questions. So the immediate actions, we’ve established are director of UAP research, they’re working across the whole of government. They’re working very closely with Arrow. They are the sort of central point for all of the

Collaboration. I’m not sure what else you asked. I’m sorry.

What mechanisms are you using to share data and information with the defense department?

All mechanisms available to us. As Dan eloquently said, all of our data are open and public. So, actually… I mean we share everything with everybody so everybody can access our NASA data.

I mean, do you have a specific repository or mechanism or channel specifically with DOD where you’re sharing information? Can you just expand a little on how Arrow and DOD are working so… Arrow and NASA are working so deeply to share things?

Sure. Do you want to take that?

Yeah, sure. I’m happy to handle that. So, as Nikki beautifully said, all of NASA’s data is open and accessible to the public. If DOD, on a specific instance, need to tap our expertise, then there are obviously secure ways of doing that and we’ve done that by appointing our liaison officer. And, yes, we know how to talk to DOD in a classified space, but again, most of what we do is unclassified and for good reason.

And the answer is actually straightforward to that. Arrow is the lead agency in the government. So, FAA reported events go to Arrow. So, they’re the central collection agency and that… Actually if you go to the Arrow site, they have a pretty complete list of things they’ve analyzed and are trying to make public. Though with Arrow, and this is just something I think is worth repeating in the context of looking at images that come from military satellites intelligence community, it’s important to remember that things are… Images taken by military instruments are classified not because of what’s in the image but because of the nature of the measuring instrument. And I think this is one of the unique things that NASA brings here, is NASA is about openness and transparency. When NASA makes measurements, NASA has, across all of it does, this program of making its data open and available and of course, but it’s not making measurements with classified instruments that enables it to do this and that one of the things that NASA brings to this space.

Thank you. And just a really quick clarification, because I think it’s important, the NASA Arrow liaison, is that official the same as your new UAP head of research?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

All right, one more in the room before we go back to the phones for a couple.

Thank you. My name is Jacob Jensen. I work for a Danish newspaper called Berlingske. My question is for Mr. Nelson. You said at the beginning of the meeting that NASA will be transparent. Well, a month and a half ago Mr. David Grusch said under oath in Congress that US government is in possession of UAPs and extraterrestrial life. How can you be sure at NASA that other parts of the US government is being transparent?

I don’t speak for other parts of the government but I can tell you, NASA, which I speak for, is open and transparent with our data.

Do you believe what Mr. David Grusch said or is he lying?

You would want me to give a personal opinion-

Yes, please.

… of what he said? What he said, if I recall having seen this on the nightly news, was that he had a friend that knew where a warehouse was that had an UFO locked up in a warehouse. He also said he had another friend that said that he had parts of an alien. Whatever he said, “Where’s the evidence?” is my response.

Excuse me. He also said that he did interview over 40 employees at the Pentagon.

Long time ago there was a TV show, Jack Friday. And he used to say, “Just the facts. Just the facts. Show me the evidence.”

Thank you, sir.

All right, we will go to the phones. Again, I know people have lots of questions but I’m going to try to keep us to just one for each person. And so next person on the phone, go ahead and introduce yourself.

The next question comes from Gina Sunseri with ABC News. Your line is open.

This is for Senator Nelson. Your report mentioned that AI could be very useful in helping in this investigation. How do you see that, sir?

Well, why limit us in anything in interpretation of data? And AI is just coming on the scene to be explored in all areas. So, why should we limit any technological tool in analyzing data that we have? I said AI was one of the things that we were going to employ.

I mean, we actually… We use AI or artificial intelligence and machine learning throughout our NASA science portfolio. It is an amazing tool for helping us to actually find often signatures that are sort of buried in data. And so a lot of our data are just sort of wiggly line plots. We get excited about wiggly line plots, by the way, but sometimes you see the wiggles and you miss a signal in there. And by using artificial intelligence we can often find signatures. So one example we’ve had is to be able to find signatures of super storms using very old data that really is before routine scientific satellite data. And it is amazing. And so just being able to use those techniques often can allow us to find things to actually find the needle. As David so eloquently said, once you’ve actually really… It also helps us to really characterize the hay. And so you can start subtracting the hay and look for the needles behind.

So, let me just take this moment to say try demystify AI and ML.

Thank you.

When, as scientists and probably many of you in high school were trained to do this, we had some data. You took your data, you drew a graph, you put a line through it. You had data in two dimensions, X and Y. Right now much of our data is in a much higher dimensional space. And if you’re working with something like Chat GPT it’s in a high dimensional space of language or tokens if you want to get technical with 12,000 tokens in the Chat GPT 3.5, for example. And machine learning is a powerful tool for representing functions in high dimensional space. That means we get to work with data in a high dimensional space. AI is very powerful but it’s no more powerful than the data you give it.

Correct.

It’s a way of, we’ve got… This is why it’s very powerful, say with NASA’s weather and climate data. We’ve got an incredible amount of data and it’s data that you want to do more with than just put a line on a graph. You want to extract all that information or more information in that high dimensional space. And I think we are just really discovering the power of that tool. And it’s one of the tools NASA and not just scientists, but I think a lot of people in a lot of different industries, are using to learn new things about high dimensional data. But it always comes back to the data you feed into your analysis whether it’s a line on a graph paper or a high dimensional space explored with machine learning. And if you don’t got good data, you’re not going to learn things.

I’m going to add one sentence. Sorry. High dimensional does not mean high space dimensions, not inter dimensional travel. We’re talking about multiple parameters here, okay?

Great. We are coming close to time. I want to get two more questions and we’re going to do one on the phone and one more in the room and hopefully, if we keep our questions short and our answer short, we’ll get to those two. For anybody who’s here who hasn’t had a chance to ask a question, you are more than welcome to send an email and we will try to get you questions as answers as quickly as possible. So one more on the phone, please?

Yes, our next question comes from Peggy Hollinger with Financial Times. Your line is open.

Thank you very much and thank you for allowing me to ask a question. I’m curious about you saying in here that you want to rope in crowdsourcing, but also you speak specifically about the potential of using commercial assets as well as your own. I’m curious about, can you just give me a bit more detail how you will do that? Will that be through commercial contracts or will you ask for voluntary reportings of sightings? And also I think that’s when you talk a lot about the importance of sensor, I’m going to use the word harmonization, because there’s no kind of harmonization between the way the sensors work. Presumably that would be the same for this use of commercial assets. How does that use of commercial assets and crowdsourcing square with the sensor harmonization that you talk about and who’s going to pay for all this? Thank you.

So, let me just say a little bit about crowdsourcing. Much of what we have in mind is taking advantage of the fact that there’s several billion of these floating around, right? And they take… I’m holding up a cell phone for those on the radio. They take high quality images, have high quality metadata, record local magnetic field, sound, gravitational field. There’s a wealth of data that a cell phone takes. And you can imagine designing apps that make the images relatively tamper free. You can at least make it hard to do. And I think if we have a collection where interesting events are collected by citizens, posted and you have multiple images of the same event, we’ll be able to learn a lot. And one of the things NASA supports is citizen science. And I think that the idea that if you see something you don’t understand, collect data, we aggregate the data and we learn from it, is important in this context and just I think in some ways an opportunity to engage the broader public in doing science.

Great. Our last question, please, from the floor.

Thank you all for doing this. Joe Kalil with News Nation. My first question is, you’ve described harassment of some of the panelists. While that is horrible and never a good thing, it does sort of come with the nature of public officials. You know, Mr. Nelson, as senator, lawmakers get that kind of thing all the time. Is that the justification for keeping this new position, Director of UAP research, private? Do you plan on doing that forever? Is that a temporary thing? Because it seems to cut against the dedication to being open and transparent if this person forever is not going to be revealed, their identity, who they are.

Yeah. Okay. So, at the time, yes, we are withholding that name. Let’s not forget that we’ve only just received this report. And what we need to do now, as an agency, is come together and provide a cohesive and coherent response to it that addresses multiple findings and recommendations. We’re only announcing initial actions today. Will that person’s name be disclosed to answer your specific questions? Potentially, yes. But again, we need to ensure that the scientific process and method is free, okay? That’s my response.

Thank you. And just lastly, the report says that you relied on unclassified material. You’ve given a very understandable description for why the DOD classifies certain images and videos. Why did you all not have access to classified material and could you have done that?

I have, so just understand that. Let the committee speak for themselves.

So, one of the reasons that we restricted ourselves this study to unclassified data is because we can speak openly about it. And in so doing we’re aiming, again, to alter the discourse from sensationalism to sciences, administrator Nelson beautifully said. NASA personnel, as appropriate, know how to talk to DOD on a classified basis. But the purpose of this study was to tell us what open data we could use in combination with the power of science to move our understanding forward. That was the purpose and we’re speaking about it openly today.

And so one of the challenges you talked about-

I’m afraid we do have to wrap up. We are at time. So, thank you everybody for being here today. Again, for those people who are not able to get questions, I do apologize for not doing it in the room. However, please send an email based on our press release. You will have information to access and we will try to get you the answers we can. And with that we are concluding today’s press briefing and thank you very much for being here.

Thank you.