The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released an Independent Study Team report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena last week in which the organization said the study of UAPs deserves a more rigorous, science-based approach.

Historically, reports of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings went largely undocumented with no standard way of logging and analyzing the event. Now, NASA is pushing to work more closely with the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to find out what is behind credible and unexplained sightings.

“We have to be able to explain this, whether it’s our adversaries doing something or something else is going on. We need to get to the bottom of this,” said John Crassidis, SUNY distinguished professor at the University at Buffalo in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Moog professor of innovation.

He said his concerns with UAP sightings lie in national security.

“I personally don’t believe in aliens, but there’s something going on that obviously in that report we can’t explain some things,” Crassidis said.

The UAP report NASA released does not discount the possibility of life in the cosmos as a motivator for continued organized space exploration. On the final page, it says:

“Even if all of the UAP events have conventional origins, the search for signs of life beyond Earth is a compelling scientific quest.”