Conspiracy theorists have long believed NASA is involved in a cover-up surrounding alien activity due to the number of UFO sightings worldwide that go unexplained. In 2017, leaked records showed the Pentagon ran a secret $22million (£17million) extra-terrestrial “black project” after reports of an aircraft moving at “very high velocities that hovered with no apparent means of lift”. However, NASA’s Assistant Director Michelle Thaller insists the space agency knows nothing more about extra-terrestrial life than what it has shared with the public.
She revealed there is no way alien life could be covered-up and it would be obvious if there was ever a threat to Earth.
Dr Thaller told BigThink: “The day you see all the NASA scientists max out their credit cards and disappear, that is when you should worry.
“We are just people and if we knew something, there is no way to hide it.
“Whenever we find something that is even slightly interesting we go to the government and the press about it – we have nothing to hide.
“This is something that is really difficult, people think we are hiding aliens, but that shows the gap between scientists and the public.
“We are now trying to involve the public in more than we do.
“I know this won’t convince conspiracy theorist, but one of the things I love most about our science is how accessible it is.”
Dr Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and their life cycle.
She went to college at Harvard University, completing a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology.
The 49-year-old then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope.
After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area, where she is now in a managerial position.