Opinion - NASA is right to examine UFOs

NASA isn’t saying aliens exist. But it is saying, for the first time in almost half a century, that UFOs are worth paying attention to.

The space agency announced last month that a team led by a respected astrophysicist will examine what the government now prefers to call UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena — and along the way, what was once dismissed as conspiracy theorizing has earned the more impressive description of “high-risk, high-impact” research. This move will not come as a surprise to those who have followed the Defense Department’s own evolution on the subject: Senior Pentagon officials in May testified in a historic congressional hearing about their own efforts to track sightings of mysterious flying objects. And the director of national intelligence issued a report last year documenting more than 140 of these perplexing events.