Overview
- Speaking at an AAAS event in Phoenix on Feb. 25, the JPL engineer said there is no proof any alien or alien machine has landed on Earth.
- He maintained that extraterrestrial life is statistically probable given thousands of exoplanets found by Kepler, suggesting the Milky Way could host close to a trillion worlds.
- Lee has worked at NASA since 1968 and helped lead engineering on Viking, Curiosity, Dawn, Juno and GRAIL, and he now serves as chief engineer for JPL’s Solar System Exploration Directorate.
- Interest intensified after Barack Obama said “aliens are real” before clarifying he had seen no evidence of Earthly captivity, while President Donald Trump ordered agencies to identify and release UFO-related files.
- NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens said the agency embraces open science and that items the administrator “can’t explain” relate to costly programs rather than extraterrestrial life.