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The Galileo Project

Research

Harvard-led research program studying UAP and technosignatures through open, instrumented sky surveys and conservative anomaly analysis

The Galileo Project is a Harvard-led research program associated with the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and Harvard Astronomy, formally described as a systematic scientific search for evidence of extraterrestrial technological artifacts.1 Its official public launch was a July 26, 2021 announcement and virtual press conference, one month after ODNI released its preliminary UAP assessment to Congress.23

  Origin and Purpose

The project emerged from two converging scientific questions: whether unusual interstellar objects such as Oumuamua could include artificial artifacts, and whether UAP reports could be studied with calibrated, reproducible instruments rather than eyewitness testimony or classified military snippets.14 ODNI's 2021 assessment left most reviewed cases unexplained, while stressing that limited high-quality reporting hampered firm conclusions and that many reports involved multiple sensor types.3

Galileo's own framing is deliberately experimental. The project argues that possible extraterrestrial technological civilizations should be tested with transparent data collection, while also expecting many observations to resolve as natural phenomena, sensor artifacts, aircraft, balloons, drones, satellites, or other human technology.15

  Leadership and Institutional Role

The project is led by Abraham "Avi" Loeb, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.6 Loeb has described the project as co-founded with Frank Laukien and as a privately supported effort to assemble and analyze scientific data from new telescopes.4

That leadership gives Galileo an unusual public profile: it is not a government investigation, a defense-intelligence office, or a traditional radio SETI program. It is closer to a civil astronomical instrumentation project that treats nearby technosignatures, interstellar objects, and UAP-like aerial anomalies as related measurement problems.45

  Research Program

Galileo's first stated research path is a ground-based network of UAP observatories intended to obtain high-resolution, multi-sensor measurements of aerial objects.4 The project's peer-reviewed observatory paper describes a multimodal package using wide-field optical and infrared cameras, narrow-field instruments, passive radar receivers, radio spectrum analyzers, microphones, and environmental sensors to classify ordinary objects and flag outliers.7

The second path is astronomical: mining surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time for unusual interstellar visitors, then considering whether any future object merits close imaging or an intercept concept.45 The third path is a search for possible artificial satellites or probes near Earth, again framed as a technosignature search requiring instrumented detection rather than legacy UFO reports.4

The project's data architecture work is aimed at a recurring UAP problem: fragmented, uncalibrated observations with missing metadata. A 2025 Galileo systems paper describes an observatory-class computing platform for real-time acquisition, sensor optimization, provenance tracking, post-processing, commissioning, census operations, science operations, and effectiveness monitoring.8

  Open-Science Sensor Approach

Galileo's public value proposition is less about a specific extraordinary conclusion than about repeatable measurement. The project's method papers emphasize transparent collection, science traceability, corroboration across sensor modalities, and anomaly recognition in a high-dimensional census of aerial phenomena.57

This makes the project complementary to, but different from, federal UAP work. ODNI and AARO begin from government reporting, review, and resolution obligations, while Galileo begins from open scientific instrumentation and public analysis.39 NASA's 2023 independent study similarly concluded that UAP analysis needs better calibrated data, multiple measurements, thorough sensor metadata, and open scientific methods; NASA also framed its role as complementary to AARO's federal lead.10

  Conservative Assessment

A conservative assessment is that Galileo is scientifically useful if it produces calibrated public datasets, improves anomaly-detection methods, and resolves ambiguous sightings into known categories. That outcome would still matter, because the UAP problem is often a data-quality problem before it is an exotic-origin problem.7810

The project has not publicly established that any UAP or interstellar object is extraterrestrial technology. NASA's independent study reported no conclusive peer-reviewed evidence for an extraterrestrial origin of UAP, and AARO's public reporting says it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings or technology to date.109

  References

  References

  1. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian - "The Galileo Project" https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/research/galileo-project ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. The Galileo Project - "Public Announcement" https://galileo.hsites.harvard.edu/public-announcement ↩

  3. Office of the Director of National Intelligence - "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Avi Loeb, Scientific American - "Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/announcing-a-new-plan-for-solving-the-mystery-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Abraham Loeb - "Overview of the Galileo Project" https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.02479 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian - "Avi Loeb" https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb ↩

  7. Wesley Andres Watters et al. - "The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Using Multimodal Ground-Based Observatories" https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18566 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Phillip Bridgham et al. - "Galileo Project Observatory Class System Architecture" https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00125 ↩ ↩2

  9. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office - "AARO and the Declassification Process" https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/Information%20Papers/AARO_Declassification_Info_Paper_2025.pdf ↩ ↩2

  10. NASA - "NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team Final Report" https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uap-independent-study-team-final-report.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3

Published on July 26, 2021

4 min read