The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Using Multimodal Ground-Based Observatories
Creators: name: Watters, Wesley Andrés
name: Loeb, Abraham
name: Laukien, Frank
name: Cloete, Richard
name: Delacroix, Alex
name: Dobroshinsky, Sergei
name: Horvath, Benjamin
name: Kelderman, Ezra
name: Little, Sarah
name: Masson, Eric
name: Mead, Andrew
name: Randall, Mitch
name: Schultz, Forrest
name: Szenher, Matthew
name: Vervelidou, Foteini
name: White, Abigail
name: Ahlström, Angelique
name: Cleland, Carol
name: Dockal, Spencer
name: Donahue, Natasha
name: Elowitz, Mark
name: Ezell, Carson
name: Gersznowicz, Alex
name: Gold, Nicholas
name: Hercz, Michael G.
name: Keto, Eric
name: Knuth, Kevin H.
name: Lux, Anthony
name: Melnick, Gary J.
name: Moro-Martín, Amaya
name: Martin-Torres, Javier
name: Ribes, Daniel Llusa
name: Sail, Paul
name: Teodorani, Massimo
name: Tedesco, John Joseph
name: Tedesco, Gerald Thomas
name: Tu, Michelle
name: Zorzano, Maria-Paz
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Signal Processing (eess.SP)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: (Abridged) Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) have resisted explanation and have received little formal scientific attention for 75 years. A primary objective of the Galileo Project is to build an integrated software and instrumentation system designed to conduct a multimodal census of aerial phenomena and to recognize anomalies. Here we present key motivations for the study of UAP and address historical objections to this research. We describe an approach for highlighting outlier events in the high-dimensional parameter space of our census measurements. We provide a detailed roadmap for deciding measurement requirements, as well as a science traceability matrix (STM) for connecting sought-after physical parameters to observables and instrument requirements. We also discuss potential strategies for deciding where to locate instruments for development, testing, and final deployment. Our instrument package is multimodal and multispectral, consisting of (1) wide-field cameras in multiple bands for targeting and tracking of aerial objects and deriving their positions and kinematics using triangulation; (2) narrow-field instruments including cameras for characterizing morphology, spectra, polarimetry, and photometry; (3) passive multistatic arrays of antennas and receivers for radar-derived range and kinematics; (4) radio spectrum analyzers to measure radio and microwave emissions; (5) microphones for sampling acoustic emissions in the infrasonic through ultrasonic frequency bands; and (6) environmental sensors for characterizing ambient conditions (temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind velocity), as well as quasistatic electric and magnetic fields, and energetic particles. The use of multispectral instruments and multiple sensor modalities will help to ensure that artifacts are recognized and that true detections are corroborated and verifiable.
description: This paper is published in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation, 12(1), 2340006 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1142/S2251171723400068