Documents / Report
This is the final report of NASA's Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team, a 16-member external panel chaired by Dr. David Spergel, with a foreword by Dr. Nicola Fox. The report says it is not a review of past incidents. It concludes that UAP analysis is limited by poor data, calibration and metadata, and that NASA should support AARO's whole-of-government effort. It recommends using NASA satellites, commercial imagery, AI, crowdsourcing apps and the Aviation Safety Reporting System, and reducing stigma around reporting.
18 It is clear to the panel that establishing a more robust and systematic frame- work and data repository for UAP reporting is essential. This particularly applies to civilian reporting of UAP: current FAA guidelines suggest that citizens wanting to report UAP contact their local law enforcement or one or more non-governmental organizations, which is inadequate for drawing scientific inferences. Although such eyewitness reports are often interesting and compel- ling, they are insufficient on their own for making definitive conclusions about UAP. Thus, their effective corroboration within a robust reporting and follow-up framework based on systematically gathered data (including the ATM system) can provide a useful tool for understanding UAP. A particularly promising avenue for deeper integration within a systematic, evidenced-based framework for is the NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which NASA administers for the FAA. This system is a confidential, voluntary, non-punitive reporting system that receives safety reports from pilots, air traffic controllers, dispatchers, cabin crew, ground operators, maintenance technicians, and UAS operators that provides a unique data source for emerg- ing UAS safety issues. ASRS receives reports describing close-calls, hazards, violations, and safety-related incidents. With 47 years of confidential safety reporting, ASRS has received more than 1,940,000 reports, averaging approx- imately 100,000 per year. Reports are received from all aspects of aviation operations. Although the system resides at NASA Ames and involves NASA employees, the ASRS program is solely funded by FAA and it is not part of NASA’s Aeronautics activity. Although not initially designed for UAP collection, leveraging this system for commercial pilot UAP reporting would provide a critical database that would be valuable for the whole-of-government effort to understand UAP, and here NASA should provide technical assistance. South Asian Object (Image 2) Footage taken by an MQ-9 of an unidentified object in South Asia with an apparent atmospheric wake or cavitation, later assessed as a likely commercial aircraft by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The cavitation is likely a sensor artifact resulting from video compression. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. What current reporting protocols and air traffic management (ATM) data acquisition systems can be modified to acquire additional data on past and future UAPs? 7 FINDING Leveraging the Aviation Safety Reporting System for commercial pilot UAP reporting would provide a critical database.
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Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.