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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Sightings18 Jan 2021
A fireball crossed northwestern Spain in the early hours of 18 January 2021 and was recorded by University of Santiago de Compostela cameras and security videos. About two months later a resident found a 527 g stone, classified as an L5 chondrite, near Traspena.
Photo: Alejandro Polanco, CC BY 3.0
Media13 Jan 2021
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb appeared on episode 154 of the Lex Fridman Podcast to argue his case that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua may have been alien technology. Most astronomers favor natural explanations for the object.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media11 Jan 2021
French pay channel Canal+ began airing OVNI(s), a period comedy created by Clemence Dargent and Martin Douaire. Set in the 1970s, it follows a CNES rocket engineer reassigned to run GEPAN, the real French space agency office that studied UFO reports.
Media5 Jan 2021
History launched The Proof Is Out There, hosted by journalist Tony Harris, in which a team of experts examines viral videos, photos and audio of UFOs and other claimed phenomena. The network said each item is analyzed to judge whether it is authentic or fabricated.
Skinwalker Ranch2021
James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher and George Knapp published an insider account of AAWSAP, the DIA-funded program run through Bigelow's company that studied UFO reports and Skinwalker Ranch. A Pentagon review cleared it with amendments; DoD said clearance did not imply accuracy.
Photo: Paul from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentJan 2021
The Black Vault posted about 2,780 pages of CIA UFO-related records from a CD-ROM it bought from the agency, which the CIA described as its entire UFO collection. The site's founder noted that claim could not be independently verified, and many pages are redacted.
Government27 Dec 2020
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, signed Dec. 27, 2020, carried the FY2021 Intelligence Authorization Act. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on that bill directed the DNI to deliver a UAP report within 180 days of enactment, leading to the June 2021 assessment.
Photo: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain
Sightings23 Dec 2020
A bright fireball lit the pre-dawn sky over Yushu in Qinghai on 23 December 2020 local time. NASA's fireball database logged the explosion at about 35 km altitude, and Chinese researchers called it the largest fireball recorded over China.
Photo: Wikiwakhan, CC0
Government16 Dec 2020
On the Conversations with Tyler podcast, former CIA director John Brennan called the Navy pilot videos eyebrow-raising and said some phenomena might reflect something not yet understood, possibly another form of life. He framed it as keeping an open mind, not as a conclusion.
Photo: CIA photo, Public domain
Sightings6 Dec 2020
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe dropped a capsule of asteroid Ryugu samples that blazed through the sky over South Australia as a planned fireball. JAXA recovered it in the Woomera Prohibited Area, and NASA teams filmed the entry from aircraft.
Media1 Dec 2020
The 305-meter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed after the National Science Foundation had announced it would be decommissioned. The dish had sent the 1974 Arecibo message; a National Academies report later analyzed why it failed.
Photo: RealtimeAI, CC BY-SA 4.0
WhistleblowersDec 2020
Haim Eshed, who long headed Israel's defense space programs, told Yedioth Ahronoth that the U.S. and Israel were in contact with aliens and that a joint base existed on Mars. Israel Space Agency chair Isaac Ben-Israel said he went too far; NASA said it had found no signs of extraterrestrial life.
Media18 Nov 2020
A Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter crew counting bighorn sheep spotted a 10 to 12 foot stainless-steel monolith in a remote southeastern Utah canyon. Officials said it was likely an unauthorized art installation and, as one trooper put it, not from another world.
Photo: Patrick A. Mackie; cropped by Chainwit, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media13 Nov 2020
Apple TV+ released Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, a documentary directed by Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer on how shooting stars, meteorites and impacts have shaped human imagination and science.
Photo: Greg2600, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings7 Nov 2020
A fireball seen by hundreds of thousands of people across eastern Sweden on 7 November 2020 was traced by an Uppsala astronomer. By February 2021 two geologists had found a 14 kg iron meteorite near Adalen, outside Enkoping, consistent with the camera tracks.
Photo: Mirgnus, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings14 Oct 2020
A China Airlines crew told controllers they saw what looked like a person in a jetpack at about 6,000 feet, seven miles northwest of LAX, the second such report in two months. The FAA notified police and the FBI said it was investigating; no explanation was made public.
Photo: Alfred Twu, CC0
Media6 Oct 2020
James Fox's documentary, narrated by Peter Coyote, surveyed UFO cases since the 1940s alongside the newly released Navy videos. It featured former Senate leader Harry Reid, ex-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and researcher Jacques Vallee. It was released for digital download.
Photo: OldDominionVA89, CC BY-SA 4.0
WhistleblowersOct 2020
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon said in the documentary The Phenomenon that he received the three Navy videos from a Defense Department contact and gave them to the Times for its 2017 story. The Times said DoD was its on-record source.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Media14 Sep 2020
A team led by Jane Greaves reported phosphine gas in Venus's cloud decks, a molecule that on Earth comes from industry or microbes, raising talk of possible life. Independent reanalyses found no evidence for it, and the journal cautioned readers about part of the paper's data.
Photo: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Greaves et al. & JCMT (East Asian Observatory), CC BY 4.0
Government14 Sep 2020
Defense Minister Taro Kono issued standing orders telling Japan's Self-Defense Forces to record and photograph unidentified aerial objects and analyze sightings, including public reports. The ministry said it knew of no SDF encounters, and Kono had said he did not believe in UFOs.
Photo: Japanese Ministry of Defense, CC BY 4.0
