On 9 June 2022, NASA announced it would commission an independent study of unidentified anomalous phenomena, the first formal engagement with the subject by the world’s premier space agency. The 16-member study team, chaired by Dr David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and a Princeton astrophysicist, began work on 24 October 2022. Its mandate was forward-looking: to recommend a data strategy for NASA, not to review past incidents or assess whether UAP were extraterrestrial in origin.
The team’s report, published on 14 September 2023, ran to 36 pages. On the same day, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the appointment of Mark McInerney, previously NASA’s liaison to the Department of Defense on UAP, as the agency’s first Director of UAP Research. Nelson stated at the press conference: “We want to shift the conversation on UAP from sensationalism to science.”
The Report
The study team’s central finding was diagnostic rather than conclusive: the core problem with UAP data was quality, not analysis. Existing reporting systems were not designed to collect the kind of calibrated, multi-sensor data that scientific evaluation requires. The team found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin among the cases reviewed but stated that the limited data available made it impossible to draw definitive conclusions about the nature of most sightings.
The report recommended that NASA leverage its existing capabilities in Earth observation, data science, and artificial intelligence to contribute to UAP research. Specific recommendations included using NASA’s fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites and sensor networks, applying AI and machine learning to identify anomalies in large datasets, engaging citizen science platforms to crowdsource sighting reports, and improving pilot reporting through integration with NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System. The team also recommended reducing stigma: Dr Nicola Fox, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science, told the May 2023 public meeting that study team members had been harassed for participating in the study.
The report was publicly available and explicitly unclassified. NASA positioned its engagement as complementary to, and distinct from, the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The study was framed as a scientific contribution, not an intelligence or national security assessment.
The Aftermath
McInerney’s appointment as Director of UAP Research was announced as a one-year detail. That detail ended in September 2024. By February 2025, a NASA spokesperson confirmed the position was vacant.
In January 2025, Mike Gold, a member of the original study team and former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Policy, stated in an interview that none of the report’s recommendations had been implemented. The Safe Airspace for Americans Act, which the study had recommended, remained unpassed. No NASA satellite data had been systematically directed at UAP analysis. No new citizen science platform had been deployed. The AI integration the report envisioned had not materialised.
The institutional contrast is stark. France’s GEIPAN has maintained a continuous government UAP investigation programme within its national space agency since 1977, a span approaching five decades. NASA’s formal engagement lasted approximately two years, from the June 2022 commissioning to the September 2024 end of the director’s detail. The study itself was rigorous. The follow-through was not.
From the Archive
NASA’s engagement connects to the archive’s documentation of the broader institutional landscape:
- The Galileo Project, which operates exactly the kind of calibrated multi-sensor observatory network the NASA study recommended. What NASA proposed, Harvard built.
- Americans for Safe Aerospace, where Mike Gold serves as an advisor and was a member of the NASA study team. The Safe Airspace for Americans Act, recommended by both NASA and ASA, remains unpassed.
- GEIPAN, France’s 47-year continuous programme within its national space agency, the counterpoint to NASA’s two-year engagement.
- The Disclosure Foundation, whose advisory board includes Gold. The Expert Letter signed by 29 scientists cited the need for institutional follow-through on NASA’s recommendations.
