SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Internet satellites are responsible for more and more public reports of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAPs), but most recent cases remain unsolved, according to a US government report released Thursday.<\/p>\n
Starlinks often move across the sky in \u201ctrains\u201d that appear like gleaming gems in the blackness of space. They are particularly visible to the naked eye shortly after each Starlink launch.<\/p>\n
In recent years, leaks and disclosures from government officials have revitalized open discussion about mysterious lights and objects, some of which move in, to put it bluntly, unquestionably weird ways. Some of these images, particularly those from sophisticated instruments on military fighter jets, have made their way into the national discourse. The New Yorker, Ars\u2019 sister publication, has a thorough report on how UAPs\u2014you might know them better as UFOs\u2014became mainstream.<\/p>\n
All of this attention has renewed questions about whether these sightings are evidence of extraterrestrial life or a national security threat from a foreign power. The Pentagon\u2019s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), created in 2022 to collect and study information related to UAPs, says it has \u201cdiscovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA commissioned an advisory board to study the topic. Last year, a senior official said the agency has found \u201cno convincing evidence\u201d any of the UAPs have an extraterrestrial origin.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers from both parties have convened hearings and passed legislation to nudge the Pentagon to become more open about UAPs. On Wednesday, a House committee questioned a panel of former government officials on the matter. The former officials all urged the government to continue studying UAPs and warned against excessive government secrecy.<\/p>\n
One of the requirements levied by Congress in 2021 called for an annual report from the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on UAP sightings submitted by the public. AARO released this year\u2019s report Thursday.<\/p>\n
AARO said it received 757 UAP reports over a 13-month reporting period from mid-2023 through mid-2024. More than half of these reports remain unexplained, AARO said.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
But many UAP cases have verifiable explanations as airplanes, drones, or satellites, and lawmakers argue AARO might be able to solve more of the cases with more funding.<\/p>\n
Airspace is busier than ever with air travel and consumer drones. More satellites are zooming around the planet as government agencies and companies like SpaceX deploy their constellations for Internet connectivity and surveillance. There\u2019s more stuff up there to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cAARO increasingly receives cases that it is able to resolve to the Starlink satellite constellation,\u201d the office said in this year\u2019s annual report.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, a commercial pilot reported white flashing lights in the night sky,\u201d AARO said. \u201cThe pilot did not report an altitude or speed, and no data or imagery was recorded. AARO assessed that this sighting of flashing lights correlated with a Starlink satellite launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the same evening about one hour prior to the sighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jon Kosloski, director of AARO, said officials compared the parameters of these sightings with Starlink launches. When SpaceX releases Starlink satellites in orbit, the spacecraft are initially clustered together and reflect more sunlight down to Earth. This makes the satellites easier to see during twilight hours before they raise their orbits and become dimmer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found some of those correlations in time, the direction that they were looking, and the location,\u201d Kosloski said. \u201cAnd we were able to assess that they were all in those cases looking at Starlink flares.\u201d<\/p>\n
SpaceX has more than 6,600 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, more than half of all active spacecraft. Thousands more satellites for Amazon\u2019s Kuiper broadband constellation and Chinese Internet network are slated to launch in the next few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAARO is investigating if other unresolved cases may be attributed to the expansion of the Starlink and other mega-constellations in low-Earth orbit,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
The Starlink network is still relatively new. SpaceX launched the first Starlinks five years ago. Kosloski said he expects the number of erroneous UAP reports caused by satellites to go down as pilots and others understand what the Starlinks look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks interesting and potentially anomalous. But we can model that, and we can show pilots what that anomaly looks like, so that that doesn\u2019t get reported to us necessarily,\u201d Kosloski said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Internet satellites are responsible for more and more public reports of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAPs), but most recent cases remain unsolved, according to a US government report released Thursday. Starlinks often move across the sky in \u201ctrains\u201d that appear like gleaming gems in the blackness of space. They are particularly visible to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1045,257,316,440,9483],"class_list":["post-44599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-elon-musk","tag-military-space","tag-spacex","tag-starlink","tag-uap"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44599"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}