On September 14, 2023, NASA published the final report of its Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team and held a public media briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The report did not identify a cause for UAP; it reframed the issue as a scientific data-quality problem requiring calibrated observations, metadata, reproducible analysis, and open reporting practices.123
NASA also announced that Mark McInerney would serve as director of UAP research, turning the report's recommendation for a NASA role into an agency coordination point for future UAP data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and interagency work.2
Origin
The event began with NASA's June 9, 2022 announcement that it was commissioning a study team to examine UAP from a scientific perspective, focusing on events in the sky not identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena. NASA framed the topic around air safety, national security, and the first scientific step of determining which events have ordinary natural or technological explanations.4
The signed Terms of Reference placed the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Independent Study Team under the Earth Science Advisory Committee and Federal Advisory Committee Act procedures. Its task was not to reinvestigate famous cases, but to advise NASA on available scientific data, possible future data collection, analysis techniques, physical constraints, civilian airspace data, reporting protocols, and future air traffic management systems relevant to UAP.5
NASA selected 16 team members in October 2022, with astrophysicist David Spergel as chair and Daniel Evans as the NASA official responsible for orchestrating the work. NASA said the study would use unclassified data and produce a public report after roughly nine months.6
Who
The September 14 briefing was announced with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Nicola Fox, Daniel Evans, and David Spergel as principal participants. NASA said the report would be posted shortly before the briefing and emphasized that it was intended to inform future data collection rather than review previous unidentifiable observations.1
The study itself was produced by the external UAP Independent Study Team, a group of scientific, aeronautics, aerospace safety, data, artificial intelligence, commercial space, and public-communication experts. NASA's final release named McInerney as director of UAP research and described his role as centralizing communications, resources, and analytical capabilities for future UAP evaluation.26
The panel also worked in public before the final release. NASA's May 31, 2023 meeting notice and agenda show a deliberative session with Evans, Fox, Spergel, AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick, FAA representative Mike Freie, and panelists presenting on scientific framing, NASA's role, crowdsourcing, beyond-Earth observations, reporting challenges, and charge-element responses.789
What it said
The report's central finding was evidentiary restraint. NASA and the panel repeatedly stressed that there were too few high-quality UAP observations to draw firm scientific conclusions, and that many existing observations were incidental captures from sensors not designed or calibrated to detect anomalous objects.2310
That distinction changed the center of gravity. Instead of treating UAP primarily as a catalog of unsolved cases, the report asked whether future observations could be made scientific by preserving sensor metadata, gathering multiple calibrated measurements, maintaining data archives, and using transparent methods that other analysts could test.35
The panel said eyewitness reports could help reveal patterns but were not enough by themselves to establish the nature of a UAP. It also said there was no conclusive peer-reviewed evidence for an extraterrestrial origin, placing that hypothesis behind ordinary natural, human-made, sensor, and analytical explanations that would first need to be ruled out.3
NASA's reframing
NASA's practical recommendation was that the agency should complement AARO rather than replace it. AARO remained the lead federal organization for resolving UAP cases, while NASA could contribute open science, Earth-observation experience, calibrated sensing, public data standards, modeling, and technical analysis.2310
The report singled out NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, administered for the FAA, as a possible path for improved commercial-pilot reporting. It also recommended using NASA's partnership with the FAA to think about future air traffic management systems that could capture better UAP data, including imaging, multispectral or hyperspectral sensing, and real-time machine-learning analysis.3
The same logic extended to satellites and commercial remote sensing. The panel suggested NASA could use Earth-observing assets to examine environmental context around UAP detected by other means, while also exploring collaboration with commercial remote-sensing providers for higher-resolution data.3
How evolved
The study evolved from a cautious 2022 commission into a public science-policy event in 2023. The May 31 meeting exposed the panel's deliberations, AARO and FAA context, and public questions before the final report, while the September 14 release translated that process into recommendations and a new NASA coordination role.1278
Its disclosure value was procedural rather than evidentiary. NASA did not publish a decisive case file, confirm an extraordinary origin, or settle historical UAP claims. It instead made a narrower argument: the unresolved residue cannot be scientifically evaluated without better data, and NASA's contribution should be to improve collection quality, reduce stigma around reporting, and make future analysis reproducible.2310
That is why the event remains unresolved. The report closed the independent study team's assignment, but it deliberately moved the UAP question forward as an open data problem: future reports would need timely, calibrated, multi-sensor evidence before NASA or any other agency could make stronger scientific claims about what was observed.310