The formal Statement of Task given to NASA’s UAP Independent Study Team contains eight questions. These eight questions define the scope of what the world’s most capable space agency believed it could actually investigate about UAP in 2022. Reading them carefully is instructive.
The 8 Questions
- What types of scientific data currently collected and archived by NASA or other civilian government entities should be analysed to potentially shed light on the nature and origins of UAP?
- What types of scientific data currently collected and held by non-profits and companies should be analysed?
- What other types of scientific data should be collected by NASA to enhance understanding of UAP?
- Which scientific analysis techniques currently in production could be employed to assess UAP? Which should be developed?
- What basic physical constraints can be placed on the nature and origins of UAP given existing data?
- What civilian airspace data related to UAP have been collected by government agencies and are available for analysis to understand UAP and determine risk to the National Air Space?
- What current reporting protocols and air traffic management data acquisition systems can be modified to acquire additional data on past and future UAP?
- What enhancements to future ATM development efforts can acquire data on future reported UAP?
What These Questions Tell Us
Questions 1 and 2 acknowledge that usable UAP data may already exist in existing civilian government and private sector datasets — it simply hasn’t been analysed for this purpose. Question 3 acknowledges NASA doesn’t currently collect UAP-optimised data. Question 5 is the most analytically significant: it asks what physical constraints can be established. This is a scientific framing that leaves open all possibilities including non-conventional physics or propulsion. Questions 6, 7, and 8 are oriented toward air traffic management — they reflect the institutional reality that the most reliable UAP data comes from aviation proximity incidents, and that current reporting systems weren’t designed to capture it.
What Was Not Asked
Notably absent from the Statement of Task: any question asking whether UAP represent a national security threat, whether they are of foreign origin, whether they demonstrate non-human technology, or whether military UAP data should be integrated. These absences reflect NASA’s civilian mandate and the institutional boundaries of a science study commissioned by the Science Mission Directorate rather than the intelligence community.
Source: science.nasa.gov/uap/. NASA UAP Independent Study Statement of Task. Terms of Reference PDF: science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/UAPISTTermsofReference_Signed.pdf