Pentagon officials said in a draft document last week that aliens could be visiting our solar system and releasing smaller probes like missions conducted by NASA when studying other planets.
A draft research report authored by Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and Abraham Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department was released on March 7 and focuses on the physical constraints of unidentified aerial phenomena.
"...An artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions," the report read. "These ‘dandelion seeds’ could be separated from the parent craft by the tidal gravitational force of the Sun or by a maneuvering capability."
The AARO was established in July 2022 and is responsible for tracking objects in the sky, underwater and in space – or possibly an object that has the ability to move from one domain to the next.
Congress tasked NASA to find 90% of all objects near Earth that are larger than 140 meters in 2005, which resulted in Pan-STARRS telescopes, according to the report.
On October 19, 2017, the Pan-STARRS detected an unusual interstellar object that was later named ‘Oumuamua, or scout in Hawaiian.
CHINA'S TOP DIPLOMAT CALLS US RESPONSE TO BALLOON INCIDENT ‘HYSTERICAL’
The object was cigar-shaped, appeared flat, and was propelled away from the sun without showing a cometary tail, leading scientists to believe it was artificial.
Three years later, another object was discovered, the report noted, namely NASA’s rocket booster 2020 SO, which had no cometary trail. The report also said six months before ‘Oumuamua made its closest approach to Earth, a meter-sized interstellar meteor, IM2, crashed on earth and exhibited an identical speed relative to the Sun at large distances and an identical shape to ‘Oumuamua.
"With proper design, these tiny probes would reach the Earth or other solar system planets for exploration, as the parent craft passes by within a fraction of the Earth-Sun separation — just like ‘Oumuamua’ did," the authors wrote. "Astronomers would not be able to notice the spray of mini probes because they do not reflect enough sunlight for existing survey telescopes to notice them."
The research paper comes after a month of scrutiny over unidentified flying objects over the U.S. Most notably, a Chinese spy balloon was shot down, only after traversing across the skies over the U.S.
