Committee NASAwhich was set up last year to study what the government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena” commonly described as UFOis due to hold its first public meeting today ahead of a report expected to be published in the coming weeks.

This 16-member body, which includes experts from fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, was formed last June to analyze UFO sightings and other data collected by civilian government and commercial sectors.

Today’s four-hour public meeting will be devoted to “final discussions before the agency’s independent research team releases a report this summer,” according to NASA’s announcement of the meeting.

The committee is conducting the first such investigation ever conducted under the auspices of the US space agency, on a matter that the administration once restricted to the exclusive and classified purview of the military and national security officials.

NASA’s investigation is separate from the Pentagon’s new investigation into unidentified air phenomena (UAPs), which have been documented in recent years by military jet pilots and analyzed by US Department of Defense and intelligence officials.

The term UFO, long associated with flying saucers and aliens, has been replaced in government jargon by the term UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).

While NASA’s science mission was seen by some as promising a more open-minded approach to a topic long considered taboo in the defense establishment, the US space agency made it clear from the start that it wasn’t about to jump to conclusions.

“There is no evidence that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin,” NASA said when it announced the creation of the commission last June.

However, in announcing today’s meeting, NASA said it defines UAP “as observations of events in the sky that cannot be scientifically identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.”

Defense Department officials said recent Pentagon efforts to investigate such sightings have resulted in hundreds of new reports being investigated, though most remain unexplained.

The head of the Pentagon’s new All-Profile Office for Anomaly Resolution (AARO) said that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life is not ruled out, however, none of the sightings of unidentified flying objects provided evidence of their extraterrestrial origin.

Source: Reuters. RES-EMI