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But many UAP incidents have verifiable explanations, such as airplanes, drones or satellites, and lawmakers argue that AARO could potentially solve more incidents with more funding.
Airspace is more crowded than ever with air travel and consumer drones. The number of satellites flying around the Earth is increasing as government agencies and companies like SpaceX deploy constellations of satellites for internet connectivity and surveillance. There are many other things to see.
“AARO is increasingly receiving cases that can be resolved with the Starlink satellite constellation,” the agency said in this year’s annual report.
“For example, commercial pilots reported flashing white lights in the night sky,” AARO said. “The pilot did not report altitude or speed, and no data or images were recorded. AARO said this sighting of flashing lights was the result of a flight by Starlight, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the same night, about an hour before the sighting. It was evaluated that there is a correlation with the link satellite.
AARO Director John Kosloski said officials compared the parameters of these sightings to the Starlink launch. When SpaceX releases Starlink satellites into orbit, the spacecraft first cluster together to reflect more sunlight back to Earth. This makes it easier to see the satellite at dusk, before it raises its orbit and gets dark.
“We found some of the correlations in terms of time, the direction they were looking, and location,” Kosloski said. “And we were able to assess that this was a case where they were all observing Starlink flares.”
SpaceX has more than 6,600 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, more than half of its active spacecraft. Thousands more satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband constellation and China’s internet network are scheduled to be launched in the coming years.
“AARO is investigating whether other unsolved cases may be attributable to the expansion of Starlink or other giant constellations in low Earth orbit,” the report said.
The Starlink network is still relatively new. SpaceX launched the first Starlinks five years ago. Kosloski said he hopes that as pilots and others understand what Starlink is, the number of false UAP reports caused by satellites will decrease.
“It looks interesting and potentially an anomaly. But we can model it and we can show the pilots what that anomaly looks like, so we can is not necessarily reported to us,” Koslosky said.
