The NASA UAP Independent Study Team

The NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team was a 16-member panel of scientists and experts commissioned by NASA in June 2022 to examine how the agency could contribute to understanding UAP using open scientific data and methods. It was NASA's first formal engagement with the subject since the 1960s.

NASA's science leadership, under associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen, framed the study as destigmatization: UAP deserved the same rigorous curiosity as any anomaly. Astrophysicist David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation, chaired; members included former astronaut Scott Kelly and leading data scientists.

The team held a public meeting in May 2023 (during which members reported harassment for participating, itself a finding about stigma) and published its final report on September 14, 2023. Conclusions: existing data are of poor quality for anomaly resolution (uncalibrated, incidental, fragmented); NASA should apply its Earth-observing assets, crowdsourcing, and AI/ML pipelines to collect purpose-built data; commercial-aviation reporting should be systematized; and the team found no evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, while noting the unknowns are real. NASA simultaneously announced a director of UAP research, initially unnamed for harassment concerns, then identified as Mark McInerney.

Spergel; NASA officials Zurbuchen, Nicola Fox, and Dan Evans; the 16 panelists.

The panel completed its mandate; its recommendations feed NASA's ongoing, modest UAP research function and its data-sharing relationship with AARO, which continues through the PURSUE era.

Advocates called the effort underpowered (a year, no classified access, small budget) and its no-evidence line premature by its own data-poverty finding. Skeptics mostly praised it as the correct scientific posture. The harassment of panelists drew condemnation across camps and became a standing citation on stigma's persistence.