In an unprecedented move, a panel established by NASA in 2022 to probe what is officially referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) – colloquially known as UFOs – was scheduled to convene for its inaugural public meeting on Wednesday. This gathering takes place prior to the much-anticipated report, which is due to be published in the coming weeks.

This groundbreaking initiative involves a 16-strong team of experts, hailing from various scientific domains such as physics and astrobiology. The panel, formed in June last year, was tasked with scrutinizing unclassified UAP sightings, along with other related data sourced from civilian government and commercial entities.

The central objective of Wednesday's four-hour-long public dialogue is to facilitate the panel's final discussions before the agency's independent research unit releases a comprehensive report later in the summer, according to a statement from NASA.

The panel signifies the first-ever investigation of this kind to be conducted under the aegis of the U.S. space agency. This represents a marked shift in the government's approach to a subject that was formerly relegated to the confidential domain of the military and national security apparatus.

This investigation by NASA runs concurrently but separately from another formally sanctioned probe based in the Pentagon, examining UAPs that have been documented in recent years by military aviators and subsequently evaluated by U.S. defense and intelligence personnel.

These two overlapping yet distinct efforts by NASA and the Pentagon – both subject to a degree of public scrutiny – underscore a watershed moment for the government. This comes after several decades of downplaying, debunking, and dismissing reported sightings of UFOs, a phenomenon that traces back to the 1940s.

The usage of the term "UFO", which conjures images of flying saucers and extraterrestrial beings, has been superseded by the government's adoption of the acronym "UAP".

Although some observers view NASA's science-focused mission as heralding a more receptive attitude toward a topic historically dismissed by the defense establishment, the U.S. space agency has made it clear that it isn't jumping to conclusions prematurely.

"Despite widespread speculation, there is no evidence suggesting that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin," stated NASA at the time of the panel's inauguration last June.

The agency has hinted at a broader interpretation of the UAP term in its recent statements, suggesting it could denote "unidentified anomalous phenomena." This suggests that the focus of the study could extend beyond airborne sightings.

Nonetheless, NASA, while publicizing Wednesday's meeting, clarified that the agency defines UAPs as "observations of incidents in the sky that are unable to be identified as either aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific standpoint."

Pentagon officials have noted that their recent initiative to explore such sightings has yielded hundreds of fresh reports that are currently under investigation, although the majority remain unclassified due to their inexplicable nature.

The leader of the Pentagon's newly established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has indicated that the possibility of intelligent alien life hasn't been dismissed outright. However, he affirmed that no sighting to date has yielded evidence of such extraterrestrial origins.