Oct 11, 2023 04:35 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 11, 2023 04:47 PM by C C.)
https://www.universetoday.com/163581/nas...-research/
INTRO: NASA says it’s going to play a bigger role in studying what’s behind unidentified anomalous phenomena, the newfangled name for what we used to call UFOs. But exactly how should NASA step into that role? The astrophysicist who helped get the ball rolling last year as NASA’s associate administrator for science is suggesting a quick and easy way to get started.
Thomas Zurbuchen, who left NASA at the end of 2022 and is now director of ETH Zurich Space in Switzerland, says his old employer could add unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, to a list of targeted research topics that’s due to be released in four months or so.
“You basically say, ‘Here’s opportunities,’ and you squeeze them in,” Zurbuchen said Oct. 7 in Boulder at the ScienceWriters 2023 conference. “Generally speaking, I think it’s a lot easier to do that.”
The alternative could be to create a separate UAP program, but that might get more complicated.
There’s precedent for taking the quick and easy way. Zurbuchen noted that NASA’s science directorate took a similar approach in 2017 when it made the search for technosignatures — including scans for radio signals from alien civilizations — part of its research and analysis program.
“We added it in part because of an authorizing bill that told us that looking for life elsewhere was one of the purposes of NASA,” he explained. “The way we did it is, we just added it to calls [for research proposals] that were already there.”
Raising the profile for UAP research was one of the key recommendations in a 36-page report that was delivered to NASA by an independent panel in June, at the end of a months-long process initiated under Zurbuchen’s watch... (MORE - details)
INTRO: NASA says it’s going to play a bigger role in studying what’s behind unidentified anomalous phenomena, the newfangled name for what we used to call UFOs. But exactly how should NASA step into that role? The astrophysicist who helped get the ball rolling last year as NASA’s associate administrator for science is suggesting a quick and easy way to get started.
Thomas Zurbuchen, who left NASA at the end of 2022 and is now director of ETH Zurich Space in Switzerland, says his old employer could add unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, to a list of targeted research topics that’s due to be released in four months or so.
“You basically say, ‘Here’s opportunities,’ and you squeeze them in,” Zurbuchen said Oct. 7 in Boulder at the ScienceWriters 2023 conference. “Generally speaking, I think it’s a lot easier to do that.”
The alternative could be to create a separate UAP program, but that might get more complicated.
There’s precedent for taking the quick and easy way. Zurbuchen noted that NASA’s science directorate took a similar approach in 2017 when it made the search for technosignatures — including scans for radio signals from alien civilizations — part of its research and analysis program.
“We added it in part because of an authorizing bill that told us that looking for life elsewhere was one of the purposes of NASA,” he explained. “The way we did it is, we just added it to calls [for research proposals] that were already there.”
Raising the profile for UAP research was one of the key recommendations in a 36-page report that was delivered to NASA by an independent panel in June, at the end of a months-long process initiated under Zurbuchen’s watch... (MORE - details)