Documents / Official release
This information paper from the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is dated December 2024 and was released in full in February 2025. It explains how sunlight reflecting off Starlink and other low Earth orbit satellites produces bright flares and satellite trains that observers can mistake for UAP. It gives step-by-step methods for predicting flare windows from the ground and from aircraft. It concludes that lights reported by an airline pilot near Gallup, New Mexico, in October 2022 were very likely satellite flares.
All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) 15 Table 3: Example template for recording estimated azimuth and elevation for Starlink flares that could explain the UAP sighting for an airborne observer. Observation Site Latitude, O1 Longitude, O1 Aircraft Altitude Aircraft Bearing Effective Obs. Site Latitude, O2 Longitude, O2 Date Time (L) Sun Altitude Sun Azimuth Look Angle (Figure 10) Sighting Parameters Sighting Azimuth Sighting Elevation The necessary information is then: 1) Observation location, O1: 35.5224°N, 108.7235°W Altitude: 35,000 feet Aircraft Bearing (also assumed to be observer's azimuth look angle): 70° 2) Using https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/find-terminal-coordinates: The effective observation location, O2 is: 36.5987°N, 104.8259°W or near Cimarron, NM 3) Year: 2022 4) Date: October 9 5) Time: 3:50AM local For steps 6 through 8, see completed Table 4 below. This was completed using https://www.suncalc.org. Table 4: Example table completed for the airborne scenario described above. Observation Site Latitude, O1 35.5224° Longitude, O1 -108.7235° Aircraft Altitude 35,000 feet Aircraft Bearing 70° Effective Obs. Site Latitude, O2 36.5987° Longitude, O2 -104.8259° Date Time (L) Sun Altitude Sun Azimuth Look Angle (Figure 10) 10/09/22 3:50AM -38.5° 65.6° ~9° above the horizon Sighting Parameters: Sighting Azimuth Sighting Elevation ~63.3° ~5.7°027Page determined to be Unclassified Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841(a)(1)(C) Date: 2/14/2025
Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 18 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.