Project Updates

You can stay up-to-date on UFODATA by reading information posted below, and by following the links on this page to our press releases, media coverage of UFODATA, and other news about the project.

You can also follow us on Facebook to keep informed. And if you'd like to directly receive updates about the project, you can sign up for our email newsletter.

28 January 2023: Project Update #12

Hello everyone. This is our project update for the year 2022 to our supporters.

The main work of the UFODATA team continues to be to create the software infrastructure to support the uploading, storage, and sharing of data collected with the technology developed by UFODAP, our partner in this effort.

Project Accomplishments

The diagram (Project Plan) displays the planned overall design and interface with the UFODAP station. In 2022 our programmers created the software infrastructure to link data of various types from UFODAP to our UFODATA front and back-end applications, where data—video files, data files from various instruments—is stored and then available for display and distribution. These applications now have base functionalities for these purposes and are being tested and then further developed.

To give you a preview of how the current version of the front-end display appears, we provide a few images from the application. This first one (Event listing) shows the list of files for an event recorded by the UFODAP station, including .csv files with data and an .avi file with video.

The video from an event is displayed to the user when that is selected, as shown here (video).

Data recorded by various instruments, in this instance recent temperature and dewpoint, solar radiation (sunlight), and accumulated rainfall, are provided in a display that can be modified to drill down on an event time (sensor data).

UFODAP

The number of installations of UFODAP technology has increased to about 40, with locations as shown on the map. (Current installations) There are now installations in four continents. We encourage you to visit the UFODAP website to learn more about the capabilities of that technology (http://ufodap.com/).

The UFODAP technology was used in a research expedition by the UAPx team, with results presented at the SCU conference in 2022. You can watch the presentation here (The First Scientific Results From UAPx). Their team had a variety of instruments and devices, and the UFODAP station was essential in detecting the very interesting ‘hole in the sky’ phenomenon associated with other unusual UAP data.

Development Plans

Based on the accomplishments highlighted above, we are now planning the next important phases of the project. These will include more internal testing of the applications, the direct collaboration with the current owners of UFODAP stations to provide real-world testing, and then modifications based on what we learn from that work.

Now that we have created applications to store and display the UFODAP station data, we will soon have increased need for server capability for file storage. If you are able to financially support our work, with an additional gift if you already contributed, or a first donation, it will be very helpful and very much appreciated You can donate here: https://www.ufodata.net/donate.html.

We hope you are excited to read about our progress and plans. In closing, thank you all. Our best wishes for a successful 2023 with many positive developments in our study of the UFO phenomenon.

The UFODATA Team

20 December 2021: Project Update #11

This is our project update in 2021 to our supporters. Similar to our previous communications, we hope that you and those close to you have continued to do as well as possible during these difficult times. Since our last update we and our partners have been busy on several avenues, which we report on in this message.

First, though, we should note that there have been many positive developments in 2021 in the UFO field, especially in how the United States government grapples with the UFO phenomenon and its investigation. We followed with great interest the publication in June of the “Preliminary assessment on UAP” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Overall, we are encouraged by the tone of the report and by the fact that it states that the majority of sightings represent physical objects. This is an important advancement compared to previous statements, as well as that the government is now open to the idea that some UFOs represent something unknown (whatever that might be). Unfortunately, no-unclassified description of the 144 UAP referenced cases has been released, therefore not allowing a more complete understanding of what has been reported.

Even more promising is the just passed by Congress 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which mandates that the Pentagon establish a new office tasked with investigating UFO sightings. This is the most significant development in government actions on UFOs since the era of Project Blue Book and the original Air Force UFO projects. Still, while very encouraging, we expect that national security considerations will predominate and that the sighting data collected, and analyses of that information, will likely remain highly classified. We therefore strongly think that civilian research should continue and increase, as we are attempting with UFODATA. Open research by the scientific community, not hamstrung by military restrictions, is the only way to ensure that the best science can be done on the UFO problem.

Turning to our work at UFODATA, we have recently signed an important partnership agreement this fall with the Scientific Coalition for UAP studies (SCU - https://www.explorescu.org/), as the two organizations share the same view about how the study of the UFO phenomenon must be done in a scientific manner. And specifically, SCU is now interested in working with UFODATA on testing and deploying a network of automated surveillance stations to study UFOs. They have many experienced scientists, engineers, and professionals as members who can assist with the work.

https://ufodap.com

Added real-time optical spectrum capture, display and recording.Continuous spectral line resulting from diffraction grating over camera lens is recorded as the target moves.The line is automatically identified and converted into a relative intensity vs wavelength plot that is displayed and/or recorded.Very preliminary beta version. See this example of the recording of spectral intensity and other related data.
New, improved UFO detection method by measuring potential target motion and rejecting target if too slow, e.g. flickering, fixed lights such as stars.Initial target detection now uses the same delta, blur, min and max parameters as subsequent tracking as specified in the Tracking selections.
New automatic change from a Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera to non Pan-Tilt-Zoomoperation when tracking a target with a velocity that exceeds camera motion capability.Maximizes capture of fast targets instead of resetting to initial bounding box and position.
Improved algorithms for target velocity measurement and initial camera move-to-target with predicted position based on target velocity.
For use with non-standard cameras (not tested by UFODAP), the Camera configuration “Camera type” field may now be any manufacturer name and model number.If so, then the Video URL field will not be automatically populated when Saved and you may enter any HTTP or RTSP character string that is correct for your camera.The ONVIF controls will assume that the camera will respond to commands as it would for a Dahua 50232 camera.If that does not work, then consider use of a UFODAP-approved camera with OTDAU or just use your camera without PTZ.

For those who want to learn more about the technology developed by UFODAP that we will be using, there has been some media coverage. Here is a link to an informative article published by Inverse: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/how-to-find-aliens, and here a link to a video interview of Ron Olch, the chief engineer for UFODAP.

The UFODATA project has recently been part of a presentation given by one of our Board members (Philippe Ailleris) to a UFO conference in Spain (The 2021 World UFO congress). This is the relevant slide showing additional design features.

Based on the positive developments highlighted above, we are now getting ready to move forward to the next important phases of the project, which include continuing the calibration and testing of the station, determining a first location and installation plan; development of an Event Data Server, where the various stations, interesting detections, and related data will be downloaded and analyzed.

UFODAP’s development of technology is effectively internally funded through those who acquire the technology, so it has not been necessary to launch a crowdfunding campaign. We have, though, contributed some funds to UFODAP to assist the deployment and testing of the station in the San Luis Valley in Colorado. We thank everyone who donated to UFODATA who made this possible. If you are motivated and able to financially support the project, you can donate here: http://www.ufodata.net/donate.html.

We are looking for a volunteer who will be in charge of maintaining and updating our website…if interested, please contact us via completing the form: https://www.ufodata.net/formVolunteer.html.

Finally, and in order to match the next phase of the project, we are happy to share with you our revised project logo, which you can see below. It reflects the global nature of the study of the UFO phenomenon and the network of stations we will be creating.

We hope you are excited to read about our progress and plans. In closing, thank you all and all best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a successful, healthy, and interesting 2022.

11 December 2020: Project Update #10

Hello again, everyone. This is our latest update about the UFODATA project, but before we begin, we hope that you and those close to you have continued to do as well as possible during these very trying times.

Our collaboration with UFODAP (The UFO Data Acquisition Project - https://ufodap.com), which we announced earlier this year, has continued, and there has been excellent progress on the hardware and software for the UFODAP station. This recent article provides more details about UFODAP and mentions UFODATA and our collaboration Looking for UFO Data in Your Own Backyard | Trail of the Saucers (medium.com).

Although the pandemic has impeded the opportunity to install new hardware at the UFODAP main testing site in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, work has continued on software development and debugging of the three main UFODATA applications: OTDAU (Optical Tracking Data Acquisition Unit), Mission Control (the software that displays acquired data and dose some basic processing), and the embedded code in the Multi-sensor Data Acquisition Unit, the core of the station. A new release of all three to move to Python 3.x 64-bit and implement a number of new features has been mostly completed. Some highlights about improvements or new features include:

RF Spectrum Analysis using Software Defined Radio (SDR) hardware in the MSDAU and spectrum presentation by MC.
More advanced scrolling MSDAU data presentation by the Mission Control software.
CSV format file save of all OTDAU position and MSDAU data (analog and RF).
Ability to restart the last system configuration by just clicking on the Load button.
Greatly simplified selection of OTDAU bounding box by drawing it with the mouse.
Automatic support for any frame resolution a USB camera can support.
Improved memory management to support high-resolution cameras on the OTDAU

We have a few photos or screenshots to illustrate the UFODAP station features.


UFODAP Optical Tracking Unit (Full size image) In this screenshot, we see the display for the Optical Tracking Unit, with the wide field camera view on the left, and the second, narrow field-of-view camera on the right. The blue rectangle indicates that the wide field camera has detected something that will trigger handoff to the second camera.	Mission Control Software (Full size image) This second screenshot from the Mission Control software shows the display of several key physical parameters that the station records, including weather, magnetic field, and acceleration. The boxes on the right provide images from the cameras in real time and actual data values from the sensors.	Radio Frequency Spectrum (Full size image) The third screenshot provides a similar view but with the radio frequency spectrum displayed, with an anomalously high value.

Currently the project engineer for UFODAP is working on adding the capability to simultaneously take a spectrum of a detected UFO and an image in the same frame, something that we have worked on previously with the UFODATA team, who has provided advice and suggestions.

We think you will agree that the progress above is very encouraging.

A next key step is to set-up the central computer server that will store and process data from the stations, and this will be a project led by UFODATA. We have created a series of design documents that, based on our experience, lists all the key requirements and the process to complete the software and hardware development. We are now actively searching for volunteer programming resources for this project. If you or someone you know is a programmer who knows Php, Javascript, CSS, HTML and Python, or some of these, and who has the time and interest, you can visit our Facebook page to see details on requirements, or email us directly at admin@ufodata.net.

If the pandemic hadn’t occurred, as with so many, many activities, we and UFODAP would be much further along in field testing of these latest enhancements (which are currently tested at the home of the project engineer). But we are certain we will be able to accomplish this in 2021. Fortunately, the server development is not limited by current conditions.

Many thanks to all of you who are spreading the word about us in your social networks. We certainly very much appreciate everyone's interest and all those who have signed up or donated to the project. Please have a safe, healthy, and happy holidays.

22 May 2020: Project Update #9

Before telling you about the latest project news, we want to express our hope and best wishes that you and your family are safe and healthy in the midst of our global pandemic.

In our earlier update in 2020 we had mentioned that we have been working on a collaboration with another group developing automated stations. We can now announce that UFODATA has agreed to work with UFODAP (The UFO Data Acquisition Project; https://ufodap.com/) to jointly pursue the goal of collecting data on the UFO phenomenon in real-time.

UFODAP is spearheaded by Christopher O’Brien, a long-time investigator of anomalous events, including UFOs, who for years was based in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The chief engineer for UFODAP is Ron Olch, a veteran systems engineer with extensive experience in software and electronics (read more about their team here: https://ufodap.com/team).

UFODAP already has working versions of an automated station, in various configurations, that includes a camera and tracking system.

Here are examples of its operation at night: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DaxK90tuOgGKplKM7EuhYMV3RZMRsROa
and during the day: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_sVv5MFPRl8nMPF8nVoPLLULvAlYXWvn.

Figure 1:
The UFODAP MSDAU unit with camera.

There is also an advanced version of the station with magnetometer, accelerometer, weather station, and GPS receiver (labelled the MSDAU, or Multi-sensor Data Acquisition Unit). The station doesn’t yet have the full capability envisioned in the UFODATA station design, including recording a spectrum, as well as instruments to measure output in the radio frequency range, plus a suite of cameras to take higher resolution images, but UFODAP continues to upgrade functionality.

As part of our new alliance, and because of your past financial support, we have provided a small grant to UFODAP to do additional testing of their station in the field, as well as continue work to add instruments (such as an RF spectrum analyzer).

In addition to our own engineering know-how, our UFODATA team brings scientific expertise to the partnership and the ability to analyze any and all data collected. We also plan to test the MSDAU in the field to assist in system improvements. We have several possible locations and individuals ready to host a station for both testing and actual deployment of a functioning station, and colleagues at various sites, such as Hessdalen, where data from a UAP can, with high probability, be recorded. And UFODATA has a group of volunteers on hand who can assist our joint effort, something that UFODAP has not focused on.

In comparison to UFODAP, the UFODATA project also has had far more publicity than UFODAP, which will allow us to more effectively promote our shared vision of detecting and recording data on UFOs in the field.

Our current collaboration with UFODAP is a working agreement; they have a different organizational structure and are not a not-for-profit organization; as a consequence, we are not yet ready to formalize the relationship.

We hope you are excited to learn about this new development in our work and plans. In closing, thank you all, with a special welcome to our newer supporters, and of course to those who have been with us for longer.

7 April 2020: Project Update #8

This is our first project update in 2020 to our supporters. We are writing today to call attention to two exciting recent developments involving UFODATA. The first, as we had mentioned in our previous update, is a TEDx Columbus talk given by our own Alex Wendt entitled, Wanted: A Science of UFOs

The YouTube video came out on February 4, and now has had almost 250,000 views. The 12-minute talk first highlighted the irrationality of the UFO taboo – which TED ironically confirmed by “flagging” the talk as “outside their guidelines for science.” It then used the recent US Navy videos to make the case for creating a science of UFO phenomena, based on an automated surveillance network, as we have been planning. Given its very favorable reception so far, we expect that, over time, this talk will widen significantly the growing cracks in the UFO taboo. Whether or not the government or scientific community takes up the challenge, it will help create the collective energy and resources for a citizen-led science of UFOs. We have already been receiving new contacts from people eager to assist the study of UFOs, and UFODATA. Please take a look at Alex’s talk and share it with friends and colleagues.

A second, technically-related development involves our new collaboration with another group planning to develop automated UFO detection stations. We have been talking with them for a few months, and we expect to have the initial details in place soon, and we will send another note to update you. This collaboration should move us significantly forward toward our goals.

As always, thank you and welcome to our newer supporters who have recently joined the mailing list (and also a hearty thank-you to those who have been with us before. The idea of studying UFOs scientifically and collecting real-time data on these phenomena has become more acceptable, and we now that UFODATA has contributed to this change.

30 September 2019: Project Update #7

This is our next project update to our supporters. Technical progress for developing our prototype for a remote measuring station (RMS) has been slow since our last update, mainly due to the lack of financial resources, which are absolutely necessary for constructing the suite of instruments and developing the required software in our first prototype model. Our efforts to raise additional funding from different sources (e.g., philanthropy, individual donors and even music bands) have not been successful so far, but we are constantly trying different avenues. While eventually we may try a crowd-funding campaign, we have monitored other crowd-funding efforts in the UFO field, none of which have been successful at raising adequate funding. Therefore, we continue to defer this option. Still, the team has also been active during the last months in different UFO related activities, and we believe that it is important to report also on this in this 2019 update.

UFODATA engineering

As indicated in our previous update, one partial model of a UAP detection instrument has already been deployed in a study area in the western United States. This preliminary "UAP Alarm" instrument has in fact been operating more-or-less continuously in the study area since July of 2018. The only interruptions in data logging have been a result of electric power failures where the instrument is located, as at this stage the instrument does not have battery backup.

Analysis is being done on the collected instrumented data, including fast Fourier transforms for patterns, alarm frequency plotting, and comparison of all alarms with the daily average geophysical Kp Index, among other things. Preliminary results show that the instrument is reliably detects geomagnetic disturbances. However, there have not been any UAP visual observations to correlate with the recorded data, although the instrument has been placed in an area with a historically higher level of sighting activity. The data do reflect some unknown disturbances, but given the fact that the study area sits on a dormant volcanic caldera, this seems not to be a surprise as various dynamic magnetic activity occurs there.

Continued software modifications are being made and tested in the lab, and then uploaded to the field instrument for operational testing. We are confident that we are making technical progress.


Pict. 1: The Hessdalen Observatory	Pict. 2: Erling Strand standing in front of the “Blue Box”.

Project Hessdalen

Erling Strand, one of UFODATA’s consulting engineers, and his Norwegian colleagues have recently opened a new research station (called the Hessdalen Observatory - see Picture 1), at the top of Mount Skarvan, where it was transported by helicopter. The station benefits from a 360 degrees panoramic view over the Hessdalen valley, is self-supplied with electricity and provides sufficient working space for scientists for doing some field research.

The other well-known station in Hessdalen, called the “Blue Box”, is being maintained by Strand (Picture 2), and continues to recordinteresting light phenomena. The 2019 updates can be found on the project’s website via the following link: http://www.hessdalen.org/station/2019/.

Philippe Ailleris, one of board members of UFODATA, travelled to Hessdalen last autumn to give a talk to students who participated to a science camp in the framework of their Østfold University College’ studies. This practical additional programme has been running for a few years and aims at promoting scientific activities, using the study of UAP as a foundation. Some details can be found here: https://www.hiof.no/ir/english/research/projects/field-research-for-promoting-science/.

Pict. 3: ASMET

ASMET All-sky camera

In terms of supplementary instrumentation, Hakan Kayal, another UFODATA consulting engineer, from the University of Wurzburg in Germany, has installed in 2018 on top of the Blue Box a new all-sky camera (Picture 3). This project is called “ASMET” and can be seen as a technology demonstration and test platform. The main objective is to detect meteors, and secondly to detect unknown aerospace phenomena. It has been operating well within its planned limits. This is an excellent test-case for the planned UFODATA station, which will allow us to learn from it and to design a much better system. The next ASMET objective is to work further on reducing the number of false alarms due to rain, insects, birds, etc.
A brief technical description of the Automatic Measurement Station (AMS) and the Blue Box can be consulted here: http://www.hessdalen.org/station/

Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) 2020 Conference

After a first successful 2019 UAP conference, Rich Hoffman and Robert Powell, other UFODATA Team members, and also Executive Board members of the SCU research organization, are planning another conference in June 2020 on the theme “What do we know about UAP and how do we move forward?"

We are planning to organize a breakout session on the topic of field investigations of UFOs and automated stations at the conference. This will allow us to share technical experience, discuss improvements of our plans, and various concepts with other researchers interested in field studies, and hopefully attract further technical volunteers.

Last April, the SCU team has released a 270 page paper that examines extreme speed, acceleration, and power outputs demonstrated by UFOs encountered by the USS Princeton, USS Nimitz, and F/A-18 Super-Hornets during a Navy military exercise on November 14, 2004 off the southwest coast of California. We encourage you to read this thorough analysis, which can be found at: https://www.explorescu.org/

TEDxColumbus 2019

UFODATA founder and board member Alex Wendt has recently been interviewed for a future History Channel episode “Ancient Aliens”. He will also take the stage on November 15, 2019 as a TEDx Columbus speaker on the UFO problem and the need for a science of UFOs built around an instrumentation project. We hope that this outreach activity will benefit the project.

US Government UFO Project

Following the Pentagon’s confirmation of the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program AATIP (a government operation launched in 2007 to collect and analyse “anomalous aerospace threat”), the U.S. government came closer to confirming the reality of UFOs when the U.S. Navy acknowledged last April that “there have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years.” In addition, the U.S. Navy has drafted new guidelines for collecting information on UFO sightings. This decision represents a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyse UFO sightings, and help destigmatize them.

Christopher Mellon, UFODATA Board member and a former Pentagon intelligence official and ex-staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been active during the last year to highlight the UFO topic within the US military and government, trying to break down the bureaucratic walls that are preventing serious UFO-related information from reaching Congress and the American people.

In line with UFODATA goals, Mellon is also pushing the message to the US government to use the capabilities it already has to understand the UFO phenomenon, as it is critical to obtain a range of data, from multi-wavelength and multi-mode sensors (e.g. radar, optical, infrared), to allow a proper analysis of the phenomenon observed. For more information regarding Mellon’s views, please see his article at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html

We are pleased with these significant developments, although the Navy has recently indicated that no release of UFO information to the general public would be made and that interesting military cases would remain classified.

Such a decision confirms once more the validity of our strategy, stressing even more the necessity of setting up the UFODATA project, with the objective of collecting/analyzing scientific measurements of the UFO phenomenon and conducting this research openly, allowing for full transparency of methods and results.

Finally, thank you and welcome to our newer subscribers who have recently joined the mailing list. Many thanks to all of you who are spreading the word about us in your own social networks. We certainly very much appreciate everyone's interest and support as progressing in UAP research represents a significant challenge.

14 April 2018: Project Update #6

We are writing to provide another update note to our supporters on the UFODATA mailing list, the first in 2018. We continue to progress with the technical side of the project, with work ongoing on what might be described as the feasibility model of a UFODATA field station. We provide an update on this work in this email, and also report on the complementary work by one of our newest team members, Rich Hoffman.

UFODATA engineering

One partial model of a UAP detection instrument has been deployed in a study area in the western United States since late October 2017. During that time, the instrument has produced a total of about 34 alarms. Four reliable human observations of visual UAP have been associated with four alarms produced by the instrument, as we have placed the instrument in an area with cooperative observers. Four "suspicious" alarm conditions (i.e., where the alarm failed to immediately reset or repeatedly re-triggered) were also logged without visual observations. The remaining twenty-six alarms were probably attributable to mundane causes such as geomagnetic storms, the solar wind, etc. All logging and correlation of events has been done manually by our volunteer operating the instrument. Automatic alarm and data logging is not in the present instrument's software, as we are concentrating on the hardware.

The magnetic sensor and computer in the field instrument were designed to respond only to dynamic (changing) magnetic flux variations over time. Alarms are triggered based on a simple algorithm and threshold which is set to ignore "noise." Flux detection is done in all three dimensions, at a rate of more than one sample per second.

As mentioned above, we have seen a few alarms coincident or nearly coincident with visual UAP observations and unusual extended instrument reset times. We have also seen alarms apparently triggered by solar Coronal Mass Ejections, geomagnetic storms, and other "noise" sources. Each of the "real" and false triggers of the alarm presumably have distinct signatures - amplitude vs time. More data is needed to "train" the instrument to recognize a UAP signature. We'll be testing additional magnetic flux logging instruments, based on the original sensor design and detection algorithm, in the field this summer. We are also learning about environmental variables and weather and their effect on operations.

Cloverdale Project

Rich Hoffman, formerly of MUFON, and a colleague there of Robert Powell, another of our team members, was added to the UFODATA team in the fall of 2017. He lives in Alabama and is an IT professional working for a defense contractor firm supporting the Army Materiel Command HQ located at Redstone Arsenal.

Rich has been working to scientifically document reports of luminous phenomena in Alabama. As Rich has written: "Cloverdale, Alabama is a small farming area just northwest of Florence, Alabama, in the Tennessee Valley. Since 1973, two men, Wyatt Cox and Greg Keeton, have spent countless nights watching the skies after local witnesses reported some luminous phenomena around their properties. They documented over 200 sightings in a book called Spooklights: The Amazing Cloverdale, Alabama Spooklight Mystery. The phenomena, appear to vary in color (red, white, blue and yellow-orange) and their frequency increases on colder nights. Size also is noted to vary with the yellow-orange being around eight feet in diameter and the others two to four feet.

"To effectively investigate an elusive phenomenon that is visible at night (most observations were between 7 pm - 11 pm) you need to have equipment that that can record in low light. Cameras need to have high ISO ranges, good optics, and low light sensitivity. Night vision capabilities are helpful, but what we are after is the spectra of this type of phenomena. In our investigations we have equipped cameras with a diffraction grating to capture the spectra of these lights.

"The challenge of getting data from a distant object that is moving through the sky at a 20-mph pace can further complicate things, but the use of drone technology helps. We are using a DJI Phantom 3 Pro drone to carry sensors as well as using its 4K camera to approach the object and capture some of this data. The challenge here is in shielding the battery in a faraday cage using protective light weight material to protect it from electrostatic charges that may emanate from the object."

This photo shows the view of a sighting location from a theodolite used by the team for measurement of sighting details. We will report on this work in the future, either in updates and/or the UFODATA website.

US Government UFO Project

As many of you have heard, in late December 2017 The New York Times carried an extraordinary story about a secret government program, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, that had studied UFO sightings for several years, from at least 2007 to 2012. At least two videos from military pilots in cases investigated by the program have been released, and AATIP's former director, Luis Elizondo, has been speaking publicly about the work that was done. Several people have asked those of us in UFODATA for our reaction to this revelation. The main lessons we take from this are 1) the existence of AATIP underscores the fact that UFO sightings continue and require serious investigation, and we are pleased that some elements in the US government agree, and 2) government programs are still not ideal for UFO study, which should be conducted in the open, as with normal science projects, allowing for full transparency of methods and results. If there is other news about AATIP that is worthy of comment, we'll do so in future updates, and 3) it is critical to obtain a range of data, from multi-wavelength and multi-mode sensors (e.g. Radar, optical, infrared), in order to allow a proper assessment of the phenomenon observed. We invite your own thoughts on this issue.

Finally, thank you and welcome to our newer subscribers who have joined the mailing list since the last update to the list. Thanks to all of you who are spreading the word about us in your own social networks. We very much appreciate everyone's interest and support.

5 August 2017: Project Update #5

This is our next update note to our supporters on the UFODATA mailing list, and the first this calendar year. We know it has been quite some time since you've heard from us, but we have been active on the technical side of the project in 2017 in developing a prototype for a remote measuring station (RMS), our working name for the UFODATA stations. This update is mostly about that work.

The design of the RMS is the key part of our overall effort to accurately measure the physical characteristics of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The second - and equally critical - portion of the UFODATA Project is to store and transmit the large amount of data we expect to generate by a single RMS (and eventually multiple stations) to the data servers where the data must be screened and analyzed.

Our technical team has been modeling portions of the full RMS system using inexpensive "off-the-shelf" hardware and ordinary desktop computers. A low-cost measuring station which performs many of the functions of the full-size RMS has been built. This engineering model, called RMSCV1, has been used to test subsystem hardware and software designs. In addition, some protocols for remotely controlling the infrastructure and instrument modules in the RMS have also been designed and evaluated using the RMSCV1.

We have selected the Linux operating system as the preferred software platform for development of the overall RMS functions. Linux is best suited to development of open-source systems like the RMS. In addition, Linux is heavily supported in academic and scientific communities.

A low-cost video spectrometer module has been designed, built, and tested inside the RMSCV1 with very good results. A couple of near-field magnetometer designs have been built for the purpose of detecting and producing alarm signals from local dynamic magnetic fields. The latter instruments can be used to trigger recording by the video spectrometer module and other instrument modules.

In addition, an inexpensive, "stand alone" magnetometer/alarm instrument has been designed and built to experiment with a digital version of the mechanical compass spin detectors used in earlier UFO research. Other instrument modules, including a Geiger counter, digital ELF/VLF radio receiver and radio spectrum scanning instrument, will also be designed and tested as we go forward.

We want to share images with you of portions of the RMSCV1 or the instruments mentioned above.

The exterior of the station module

The general interior of the module

Standalone dynamic magnetic field detector /alarm

Moon spectrum data acquired by the video spectrometer

Calibration data for the video spectrometer

This version of the prototype station does operate remotely but is not yet ready to deploy for months at a time.

We hope you are as excited as us to see the progress that has been made toward our prototype RMS.

In other news, we have added to our technical team two experienced engineers, one based in Holland and one in the USA. They are working to refine details of our requirements and instrument choices for such things as the all-sky camera, and will also be thinking about the overall system requirements to integrate the software, hardware, and construct the appropriate enclosures for everything. This is an important ongoing activity because of the continuous advances in sensor and digital technologies.

We are also looking for the right person to work with these engineers and our technical and scientific team to act as the Project Manager; we've made do without that until now, but as development continues, that will become critical.

In all of this we have been very frugal and have not yet used the money that has been donated to spend on any expensive instruments or computers, although we expect to soon allocate some portion of our funds to pay for additional hardware to test in the RMSCV1.

As we reported to you in 2016, we have also been busy looking at many different funding sources (philanthropy, research institutes, individual donors) to collect sufficient funds to make progress on the prototype station, both in terms of design and cost estimates, as mentioned above. More on this in future updates.

Finally, thank you and welcome to our newer subscribers who have joined the mailing list since the last update to the list. Thanks to all of you that are spreading the word about us in your own social networks, and we ask that you please continue to do so. We want to keep the community growing among the many people who are interested in UFOs.

Your interest is appreciated, as is that of all members of our mailing list, and everyone who has signed up or donated to the project.

6 October 2016: Project Update #4

This is our next update note to our supporters on the UFODATA mailing list. It has been many months since our last note, so we want to both update you and explain why you haven't heard from us for a while. But first, a thank you and welcome to our newer subscribers, who have joined since our last note to the list. Your interest is very encouraging to the team.

Progress has been slower than expected in the last few months because several members of the core team have had to deal with various unforeseen non-UFO related issues (e.g., health of family members) that have required much of their attention. Our core team is still small and so these life events have delayed various activities, including the vetting of new volunteers. Things have been improving and we expect the project to be back on track this fall.

A positive development was a recent informal meeting of people and groups working on automated collection of data on the UFO phenomenon that was held at the MUFON Symposium in Orlando, Florida, in August. Robert Powell represented UFODATA at the meeting and briefed them on our plans, and the other groups, talked about their work. There may be some opportunities to collaborate between the groups and individuals, although the methodologies are often quite different and so the projects at this point will remain independent. And that is probably best as despite our confidence in the UFODATA approach, science often works best with multiple teams attacking a problem. Robert reports that everyone at the meeting realizes that progress will be hard - but not impossible! - and we plan to continue the conversation with our colleagues.

Our technical group is pursuing some of the engineering problems associated with reliable video/photo detection of UAP activity, spectroscopy, ionizing radiation, ELF/VLF signals, etc. We are encouraged by the new, cheaper technologies that are arriving at an alarming pace and are trying to learn about those so they can be incorporated into the station design.

Although not in the crowdfunding stage (and thanks again for those who have contributed to the project), we are still actively looking at different sources of support (philanthropy, research institutes, individual donors) to possibly collect enough funds to make progress on the prototype station even before crowdfunding begins.

Finally, we wanted to bring your attention to an article in the Huffington Post that you may not have seen. Chris Mellon, one of our board members, had a Q&A with Leslie Kean, another board member, about what Chris has observed directly about government interest in UFOs government cover-ups, and what Chris learned during his government service. Although not directly connected to the work of UFODATA, we thought you would find this informative. See Is There a UFO Cover-up? for the article.

Thanks again, and we look forward to having more news at our next update.

31 March 2016: Project Update #3

This is our next update note to the UFODATA mailing list. As usual, a wholehearted welcome to our newer subscribers, who have joined since our last note to the list in mid-January. Thanks to them, and also to our earlier subscribers to the mailing list, for your interest and support of UFODATA.

We have one important update about the project to report in this note.

Although this is not the fundraising phase of the UFODATA project, we have received donations from a good proportion of all those who have contacted us. This has been very encouraging and helpful. At the same time, we have been on the lookout for any other sources of funding, and we fortuitously learned about the Lucius Farish Trust, a small fund established by Lou Farish, a longtime UFO investigator and organizer of UFO activities. The fund provides small grants to support worthy research and investigative projects, and we were successful in applying for and being awarded the maximum grant amount of $5,000 in the Trust's early 2016 application cycle.

Our application specified that we would use the money expressly for equipment and related costs to accelerate the development of the prototype station, and we plan to do exactly that. As that activity accelerates we will keep you informed.

Receiving the Farish Trust grant is another indication that the UFODATA project is viewed favorably by those knowledgeable about UFOs as a valuable project and one which the UFODATA team is capable of accomplishing.

We continue to be excited about the support the UFODATA project has received from the public, media, and our colleagues. For those of you who have signed up for the mailing list in 2016 and who haven't already contributed to UFODATA, please consider doing so; all contributions, in any amount, are appreciated. And thanks, again, to all of those who have already taken action to help UFODATA achieve its goal.

Thanks again, and we'll continue to keep you posted with regular updates.

14 January 2016: Project Update #2

This is our second update note to the mailing list. First, a big welcome to our newer subscribers, who have joined since our first note in mid-November. And hello again to those who joined the mailing list soon after our launch. There are now well over 500 subscribers to the mailing list, and over 500 members on our Facebook page. Thanks to all of you for your interest and support of UFODATA.

We have several news items or updates to share with you in this note.

There are some important additions to our team in the past month or two. First, Christopher Mellon has joined the board. Chris spent nearly 20 years in the federal government serving in various national security positions, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He holds an M.A. from Yale University and has taught national security issues at Georgetown University. Second, we have added a well-connected individual to our Silent Advisors group to assist with fundraising. This fellow is a leader in the philanthropy community and is an internet entrepreneur who heads a global network of young philanthropists.

On the technical and scientific side, we have attracted a huge number of volunteers since the project launch, almost 200 in total, many of whom have excellent experience and very relevant skills. One in particular who we immediately added to the core team is a scientific programmer who has worked for years in aerospace and space-related projects and now is employed at a well-known laboratory. He is working with the team to further refine the plans to develop the UFODATA prototype station.

Meanwhile, we are sorting through and having discussions with various potential volunteers, but as we mentioned in our earlier note, there are so many that it is taking more time than anticipated (that's a good thing!).

We have continued to do well with media coverage, with stories published in a variety of sources. Here are two examples:

What are UFOs, New Study Aims to Find Out

www.scientias.nl/bestaan-vliegende-schotels-echt-wetenschappers-zoeken-het-uit

Visit our Facebook page or Media & Publications. page for more.

We know that some of you have been spreading the word about us in your own social networks, and we ask that you please continue to do so. We need to keep the community growing among the many people who are interested in UFOs.

Although we are not doing crowdfunding, as you realize, we have been successful in attracting donations of all sizes from supporters in 11 different countries. We are on the way towards accumulating the funds required for the prototype station, but we are still short of that goal, and we can't build it without further donations. If you haven't already contributed, please consider doing so in 2016. And thanks to all of those who have already taken action to help UFODATA achieve its goal. For those in the US, donations are fully tax deductible.

So overall, we are pleased with the support the UFODATA project has received from all quarters. It is gratifying that so many people share our vision of how to move the science of studying UFO/UAP to the next level. Thanks again, and we'll continue to keep you posted with regular updates.

14 November 2015: Project Update #1

Welcome, and thank you for joining our community! Because this is a grassroots effort community building is crucial to our success, and so we very much appreciate your support for our efforts. In less than one month several hundred of you have signed up for Updates on UFODATA's website, and another comparable number of people have joined our Facebook group, and the growth in your numbers shows no signs of slowing. This has been well beyond our expectations for this stage, and so thanks to everyone.

We have also done very well with media coverage, not only in the number of stories that have been written, but also their overwhelmingly supportive tone (visit the Media & Publications. page to find links to these). We have had some mainstream media exposure, but lots in alternative media, which are clearly important for now. However, each of you as an individual can also play a crucial role here, by spreading the word about us in your own social networks. If your friends reach out to their friends, and they in turn to theirs, then given how many people are interested in UFOs, eventually the growth in our community will become exponential, and anything will be possible!

Second, in addition to our community members, more than 100 people - and counting - have come forward in response to our call for volunteers to help implement our plans (several of you receiving this email have volunteered). Their skills cover a very wide range of abilities, including the technical and scientific but also legal, public relations, and graphic design. Among these many volunteers are a good number of the scientists, engineers, and programmers that we need to flesh out our technical team. Indeed, the volunteer response has been so unexpectedly strong that vetting everyone is proving to be quite time consuming, but we are working our way through the files and will be adding new members to the team soon.

Finally, the one area where we have only met rather than exceeded our expectations is in fund-raising, where we still have some way to go to reach what we estimate is necessary to build a prototype station - and from there to move to the second, formal crowd-funding phase of our campaign. But, we are confident that our community will keep growing at its current pace and that we will reach our goal, with the help of people like you. However, the sooner we do so, the sooner we can put our technical team to work, so please do not under-estimate the importance of even very small donations to the effort.

In sum, we have been delighted and really energized by the response to UFODATA to date, and as such want to thank you again for helping to make our launch a big success. We'll keep you regularly updated as the project progresses.

14 October 2015: The Project has officially been launched with the opening of the website.

After several years of preparation, the UFODATA team has taken this first step in creating a systematic science of UFO phenomena. With no likelihood of institutional backing because of UFO taboo, we have conceived of UFODATA (a non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization) from the start as a grassroots, collective effort that will stand or fall based on our ability to tap into the millions of people out there who, like us, thing that UFOs deserve scientific study. See articles about our launch at Media & Publications.

The development of UFODATA will occur initially in two stages. In Phase one, which we expect to last several months, we will focus on filling gaps in our technical staff and on raising enough funds to build and test a single, prototype station. The money raised in this stage will be used to buy the various components (which we have already identified), construct the station, and begin to write the software to make it operational. Phase two will then consist of our main fundraising, and then using that money to construct and deploy several stations.

If you are inspired by our idea of building an eventually worldwide network of UFO surveillance stations we cordially invite you to support us with a contribution.

Thank you so much for assisting UFODATA in this challenging and important work.