Topic
Official programs, reports, laws and hearings, from Project Blue Book to AARO and the National Archives. 366 events, newest first.
GovernmentFeb 2018
Answering a written question from lower-house lawmaker Seiji Osaka, the cabinet said it had never confirmed UFOs thought to come from beyond Earth and had made no special study of how to respond if one entered Japanese airspace. The question also cited the U.S. Pentagon's UFO program.
Photo: Cabinet Public Relations Office, Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, CC BY 4.0
Government19 Oct 2017
The University of Hawaii's NASA-funded Pan-STARRS1 telescope spotted a small object whose path showed it came from outside the solar system, the first such visitor confirmed. Named 'Oumuamua, it became the center of later debate over whether interstellar objects could be artificial.
Photo: R. Ratkowski, Public domain
Government17 Jan 2017
The CIA posted about 930,000 declassified documents, more than 12 million pages, to its online reading room. The CREST collection, which includes the Star Gate remote viewing files, had until then been viewable only on a standalone system at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain
Government24 Oct 2016
France enacted law 2016-1428 on civil drone safety, adding registration, training, onboard signalling and jail terms for flying over prohibited zones. Commentators tied it to illegal overflights of sensitive French sites.
GovernmentOct 2016
Spain's Ministry of Defence published 80 Air Force UFO case files, about 1,900 pages covering 1962 to 1995, in its online Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa. The files had been declassified from 1991 and earlier could only be read in person at the Air Force library in Madrid.
Photo: Bartomeu Caldentey Vives, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government26 Sep 2016
Objects that fell in Sumenep on Madura island on Sept. 26, 2016 were identified by Indonesia's space agency LAPAN as debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. LAPAN handed the pieces over to SpaceX in Bandung on Oct. 7, 2016.
Government25 Sep 2016
China's state news agency Xinhua reported the opening of the 500-meter FAST radio telescope in Guizhou, then the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. Chinese astronomers said its work would include studying possible interstellar communication signals.
Photo: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain
Government24 Mar 2016
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel on ABC that, if elected, she would go into the government's UFO and Area 51 files and make as much public as possible, saying people should be told if there was nothing there.
Photo: United States Department of State, Public domain
Government21 Jan 2016
The CIA published two web features pointing readers to declassified UFO documents in its FOIA collection: one sorted files for X-Files characters Mulder and Scully, the other drew lessons from how agencies investigated sightings such as the Socorro, New Mexico case.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain
Government2 Jan 2016
Metal spheres fell in Yen Bai and Tuyen Quang provinces in early January 2016, one landing in a maize field and others hitting houses. Vietnam's Defence Ministry said they were burnt, non-explosive compressed-gas tanks likely from a launch vehicle, and that they were not UFO parts.
Government13 Aug 2015
The FAA said pilot reports of drones near manned aircraft had risen to more than 650 so far in 2015, up from 238 in all of 2014. Monthly pilot reports in mid-2015 ran several times higher than a year earlier.
Photo: Runner1928, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government13 Feb 2015
On his last day as counselor to President Obama, John Podesta tweeted that his biggest failure of 2014 was again not securing disclosure of the UFO files. It was unclear which files he meant; he had long urged release of government UFO records.
Photo: Lawrence Jackson, White House photographer, Public domain
Government8 Jul 2014
France's space agency CNES, through its UAP study unit GEIPAN, hosted a two-day international workshop in Paris on better ways to collect and analyze UAP reports. Scientists, gendarmerie and air force officials and outside researchers presented; GEIPAN published the papers and slides.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Government8 Apr 2014
Bright spots in Curiosity Navigation Camera images from April 2-3, 2014 drew online claims of a light on Mars. NASA said the likely causes were cosmic-ray hits on the detector or sunlight glinting off rock, noting such spots appear nearly every week.
Government2 Apr 2014
On ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live, former President Bill Clinton said that in his second term he had Area 51 records checked and the Roswell papers reviewed, and found no aliens. He added he would not be surprised if Earth were visited some day.
Photo: Lauren Gerson, Public domain
GovernmentOct 2013
Peru's air force said it was reviving DIFAA, an office set up in 2001 to study anomalous aerial phenomena that had been dormant for about five years, citing a rise in reported sightings. Col. Julio Vucetich said it would pair air force staff with scientists and take public reports.
Photo: Lizet Morales Zaragoza, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government15 Aug 2013
A CIA history of the U-2 and OXCART programs, released under FOIA to the National Security Archive, openly named Area 51. It says high-altitude U-2 flights sparked many 1950s UFO reports and that U-2 and OXCART flights accounted for over half of reports in the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.
Photo: CIA, Public domain
Government21 Jun 2013
The National Archives released the final 25 MoD UFO files, about 4,400 pages covering late 2007 to the desk's closure in November 2009. They include a 2009 briefing saying no reported sighting had shown an extraterrestrial presence or military threat.
Photo: Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentSep 2012
Newly declassified 1956 Air Force records released through the National Archives described Project 1794, a disc-shaped vertical take-off aircraft that contractor Avro Canada projected could reach Mach 4 and 100,000 feet. The project never produced a working saucer.
Photo: Bzuk at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Government12 Jul 2012
The UK National Archives released the ninth batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files. Papers showed defence intelligence staff weighing possible explanations in the 1990s, and a 2008 note from the UFO desk officer saying the MoD knew of no evidence of alien visits.
Photo: Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0
