The Galileo Project

The Galileo Project is a research program founded in July 2021 by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb to search systematically for evidence of extraterrestrial technological artifacts, near Earth and in the solar system, using purpose-built instruments and open scientific method.

Loeb launched the project after the 'Oumuamua controversy and the 2021 ODNI UAP report, with private philanthropic funding (initial gifts arrived within weeks of announcement) and a research team spanning astronomy, physics, and engineering.

The project's three branches: instrumented UAP observatories (all-sky camera, infrared, audio, and radio suites at Harvard and expansion sites, with machine-learning pipelines publishing methods and commissioning data in peer-reviewed venues); studies of interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua and candidates for artificial origin; and expeditions, most famously the 2023 Pacific voyage that recovered sub-millimeter spherules from the seafloor along the path of the 2014 IM1 fireball, publishing chemical analyses the team argues indicate unusual, possibly interstellar composition. The observatory branch has reported statistical analyses of aerial-object populations rather than any confirmed anomaly.

Loeb directs; research teams have included postdocs and affiliates across institutions; expedition funding came from private backers.

Active through 2026, expanding observatory sites and continuing publication amid the heightened interstellar-object interest of the 3I/ATLAS era.

Mainstream astronomers have criticized the IM1 spherule claims (attributing them to ordinary meteoritic or industrial material and questioning the fireball's interstellar classification) and Loeb's media style. UAP advocates sometimes fault the project for finding nothing anomalous, which its defenders consider evidence the method is honest. Its core contribution stands either way: the first university program applying calibrated, published instrumentation to the UAP question.