NASA UAP Independent Study Team final report

May 24, 2022. NASA issued terms of reference for an independent study team on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Its task was not to solve any one sighting. It was to show how NASA could bring science to the subject, using only unclassified data. Sixteen members began work that October, chaired by David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation. Among them were science journalist Nadia Drake and former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.

May 31, 2023. Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters. The team held its only public meeting. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, showed footage from an MQ-9 Reaper. On July 12, 2022, over the Middle East, its sensor had filmed a spherical object. It was described as metallic, with "enigmatic technical capabilities". AARO said it needed more data. Military personnel, Kirkpatrick said, were seeing "metallic orbs" "all over the world".

Then came a second case. A P-3 aircrew on a training mission reported three objects that seemed to be "moving erratically." They turned out to be aircraft 30 to 40 miles away. Sensor jitter had made them appear to move strangely. Air traffic control data matched them to commercial airliners on a landing approach. Only a very small percentage of reports, Kirkpatrick said, could reasonably be anomalous.

September 14, 2023. At NASA's headquarters, Administrator Bill Nelson gave the verdict. "The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin." The deeper problem was the data. Spergel called current collection "unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies." The report cited poor sensor calibration, a lack of multiple measurements and missing sensor metadata. Aliens, it said, should remain "the hypothesis of last resort."

Its roadmap urged NASA to build a robust dataset. It pointed to NASA's Earth-observing assets, commercial high-resolution satellites, artificial intelligence and crowdsourced smartphone data. It also gave NASA a role in reducing the stigma around UAP reporting. "We want to shift the conversation about UAPs from sensationalism to science," Nelson said. To claims that governments are hiding aliens, he replied: "Show me the evidence."

The panel had paid a price. Members faced "online abuse" for taking part, and NASA security became involved. "I was unprepared for how nasty it was," Drake said. Nelson called some threats "beyond the pale."

NASA first kept secret the name of its new Director of UAP Research. About eight hours later, it named Mark McInerney, its former liaison to the Department of Defense on UAP. The briefing also faced a question about the two small bodies journalist Jaime Maussan had just shown Mexican lawmakers. Spergel said anyone holding such material should make it publicly available for study.

The report ruled on no single sighting. Spergel said most sightings can be put down to planes, drones, balloons or weather. AARO left the MQ-9 orb unresolved. In October 2023, Bellingcat geolocated the footage to northeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria. Some analysts, including a thread on Metabunk, suggested it may be a balloon.

The team was dissolved the day its report appeared. Some in the UFO community were disappointed that its only conclusion was a need for more "high quality data." Others saw NASA's involvement as historic. McInerney retired from NASA in July 2025. The study now sits in a long line of official looks at the question, from Project Blue Book and the Condon Committee to AARO.