There is a possibility that extraterrestrial motherships and smaller probes could be visiting planets in our solar system, the head of the Pentagon’s office of unidentified aerial phenomena research noted in a draft report shared on Tuesday.

“An artificial interstellar object could be a mothership that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not unlike NASA’s missions,” Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, wrote in a research report authored by Abraham Loeb, chairman of the astronomy department at Harvard University.

Sean Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick, who was named director of AARO when it was founded in July 2022, previously served as chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Center for Space and Missile Intelligence. AARO was created to investigate unidentified “objects of interest” around military installations, according to a Pentagon press release.

Loeb, on the other hand, gained notoriety when he proposed that our solar system had been traversed by its first extrasolar visitor in October 2017. At that time, the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii detected an object moving at a speed that led some scientists to suggest that it originated outside our system. The object’s orbit also suggested forces other than the sun’s gravitational pull influencing its motion.

Scientists have dubbed the object “Oumuamua,” the Hawaiian term for “scout,” which Kirkpatrick and Loeb offer in their research paper as an example of a possible mothership with probe capabilities.

“With a proper design, these tiny probes would reach Earth or other planets in the solar system for exploration, as the mothership passes within a fraction of the Earth-Sun separation – just as ‘Oumuamua did,” the authors explained. “Astronomers wouldn’t be able to perceive the spray of mini-probes because they don’t reflect enough sunlight for existing research telescopes to notice them.”

The research paper — titled “Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” — comes after a month of intense scrutiny of unidentified flying objects, a stirring trend that began when a Chinese spy balloon captivated the nation adrift in U.S. airspace. Three additional unidentified objects were later found.

On February 16, Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and 12 other senators sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stacey Dixon asking for full funding for AARO. The Biden administration’s previous funding request for fiscal year 2023 failed to fund anything beyond the office’s basic operating expenses, lawmakers argued.

“AARO provides the opportunity to integrate and address threats and dangers to the U.S., while providing greater transparency to the American people and reducing stigma,” the lawmakers’ letter stated. “AARO’s success will depend on robust funding for its activities and cooperation between the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.”