What Are UFOs?

After decades in the shadows, UFOs are being studied seriously. Are they weather balloons, optical illusions, secret military technology? Or something else? Follow scientists as they try to unravel the mystery of the strangest objects in our skies.

The government does keep secrets about aerospace technology, but are those linked to UFO sightings? How much do they really know? With growing concerns about national security and more citizen sightings of unidentified objects in our airspace, the need to identify these unknown objects is greater than ever before.

For decades, rumors of alien spacecraft at Area 51 have captivated the public imagination. In what is now known as one of the most infamous government cover-ups, an absence of information fueled wild speculation. Discover how UFO stories may have served as a convenient smokescreen for secret testing of advanced military technology.

When you spot a UFO, are you really seeing something unknown? You can actually see things in Earth's orbit like weather balloons, the International Space Station, and a 60-satellite system called Starlink. Technology has created more clutter in the sky — and a much greater chance for us to misinterpret what we're seeing.

There have been reports of UFO and UAP sightings for decades, but these accounts are often difficult to verify. Now, scientists are in search of the elusive: hard data. From machine learning sites that analyze the sky 24/7, to a crowd-sourcing app that asks the public to submit their own UFO videos, discover the inventive methods at play to capture more data.