Has the United States confirmed sightings of alien craft, or worked to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology?

A more than 60-page Pentagon report released Friday says no, pouring cold water on popular conspiracy theories about government cover-ups of contact with aliens.

The report was mandated by Congress, which required the submission to lawmakers of a "written report detailing the historical record of the United States government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs)," more commonly known as UFOs.

The Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) "found no evidence" that any government investigation, academic research or official review "has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology."

Instead, "all investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," said the report.

It also "found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology."

AARO said the inaccurate reverse-engineering claims are "in large part the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.

NASA's Artemis program is scheduled to return astronauts to the moon and establish a permanent orbiting laboratory by the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, private companies are making significant steps in taking paying customers further into space. As humanity's footprint expands beyond the familiar terrains of Earth to the moon and possibly beyond, an intriguing new field emerges from the final frontier: astroforensics.

This discipline, still in its infancy, is propelled by the inevitability of human nature. Space presents a unique and harsh environment for forensic investigations. Settings that present altered gravity, cosmic radiation, extremes in temperature, and the need for oxygen-providing climate systems provide a few examples of the unearthly variables that are faced by future explorers.

Unlike Earth, where gravity, a constant force, shapes many aspects of our reality, the significant reduction of gravity in space introduces novel challenges in understanding how evidence behaves. This shift is crucial for forensic sciences like bloodstain pattern analysis, which relies heavily on gravitational effects to determine the circumstances under which blood stains are formed.

The thought of gravity in space immediately conjures images of astronauts hauntingly suspended in the void of space or floating gymnastics in the International Space Station (ISS).