Nasa chief orders inquiry into UFO sightings by pilots

THE head of Nasa has said he believes UFO reports, as he commissioned an eight-month inquiry into hundreds of unexplained sightings.

Bill Nelson, the former space shuttle astronaut and US senator, said he had talked to two pilots who saw numerous flying objects, and had turned the investigation over to Nasa’s top scientist.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” he told a briefing of science journalists.

“I’ve talked to the Navy pilots that know that they saw something back in 2004. They tracked it on their radar over the Pacific.

“Since then hundreds of objects have been spotted and a couple of them were explained, they may be balloons, but most of them are unexplained.

“So I’ve asked Nasa, and it will be announced within a few days, to approach this subject from a scientific standpoint, since we are a scientific research organisation. In about eight months they’re going to report.”

Asked whether the sightings could be enemy aircraft, Mr Nelson added: “I hope it isn’t, because the Navy pilots would describe it as ‘It’s here and then it’s over there. With no time in between’.

“My simple answer is I don’t know. And that’s why I’ve asked our scientists to see if they’ve got any explanation.”

The inquiry will be led by Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, of the Science Mission Directorate, Mr Nelson said.

Last year, one of the Navy pilots went public to describe how she had seen multiple UFOS while stationed off Southern California on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. The objects moved impossibly fast, dropping 80,000ft in less than a second and jumping dozens of miles in seconds, in an incident caught on infrared camera and radar.

‘I hope it isn’t enemy aircraft because the Navy pilots would describe it as “It’s here then it’s over there”’

“It jumped from spot to spot, and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable,” she told 60 Minutes in the US. “The whole time we’re on the radio with each other just losing our minds.”

Cmdr David Fravor engaged one of the oblong objects, which he estimated to be 40ft in length, but it disappeared only to be picked up seconds later on ship radar 60 miles away.

Tsunami-like “starquakes” so violent they change the spherical shape of distant suns, have been spotted by Gaia space observatory, which is studying the Milky Way.