The Galileo Project: Can Scientists Catch a UFO on Camera?
The Galileo Project wants to study UFOs by catching them on camera. A UFO is an object in the sky that has not been identified. The project gathers its own measurements so researchers can test what an object might be, including whether it could be alien technology.
Its cameras have already produced results, though none has established an alien visitor. In November 2026, the team announced plans for an observatory in Ithaca, New York. There, radar would help a telescope turn toward a moving object before it disappeared.
A UFO Search With Its Own Cameras
The project launched publicly on July 26, 2021. Its original announcement described a search built around new observations. Collecting the data themselves would let researchers choose equipment suited to the questions they wanted to answer.
Astronomer Avi Loeb's project looks for physical objects that can be studied using known physics. Its stated scope leaves old eyewitness cases to other investigators. The team wants instruments recording an event as it happens.
This differs from looking for a signal sent by a distant civilization. Our guide to SETI's progress covers searches using radio waves and light. Galileo's work in Earth's atmosphere asks what is moving through the sky near us. Researchers hope to measure an object's shape and flight path together.
How the Galileo Project Began
Teaching the Instruments What Ordinary Looks Like
In its 2022 plan, Galileo described cameras that record visible light, infrared light and ultraviolet light. The last two lie beyond what our eyes can see. Infrared cameras can pick up heat radiation from an object.
The plan also included radar, sound recordings, magnetic measurements and weather monitoring. These tools could help researchers compare different clues from the same event. A camera might show a moving dot, while another instrument helps explain what caused it.
The equipment needs checking too. A camera system must measure known objects correctly before researchers can trust its readings of an unfamiliar one. Checking instruments against known examples is called calibration.
Galileo's published principles call for sharing data and making work repeatable by other researchers. Those are the project's stated goals. They do not mean every original recording has already been released.
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Half a Million Paths, With Questions Left Over
The first results came from eight infrared cameras. Over five months of testing, the system worked out about 500,000 paths taken by objects moving through its view. An object can leave more than one recorded path, so that figure is not a count of separate objects.
The study published in Sensors in 2025 used broadcasts from aircraft to help check the camera system. After researchers reviewed the results by hand, 144 paths still could not be clearly identified.
The team lacked enough information about distance, motion or other measurements to settle those cases. The authors thought ordinary objects were likely explanations. The remaining uncertainty showed what more the equipment needed to measure.
The Distance a Dot Doesn't Tell You
Imagine two objects crossing the same small part of your view in a second. One is nearby; the other is far away. The distant object has to travel farther to make the same apparent move. Yet both could leave similar streaks in a flat image.
To work out their speeds, researchers need their distances too.
An October 2026 preprint describes Galileo's test of a way to measure distance. The team set up three camera sites near Las Vegas, with gaps of two and ten kilometers between them. Each used an eight-camera infrared dome called IR-Dalek.
Cameras in different places see the same object from different angles. Matching those views lets researchers work out where it is in three dimensions. This is called triangulation. The method can locate the object without first assuming what path it follows.
The team tested recordings from May 24 through May 30, 2026. It compared the aircraft positions and speeds calculated from the cameras with ADS-B broadcasts, which are messages aircraft send about their position.
Known aircraft gave the researchers a way to check their answers. The paper reported a test of the measuring system. It had been submitted for publication and did not announce the discovery of an unknown craft.
Avi Loeb Explains the Galileo Project
A Closer Look From Ithaca
The November 5 Ithaca announcement proposes a new observatory funded by Adam Weitsman. The site is on property once owned by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
The plan pairs a 0.7-meter PlaneWave telescope with passive radar. This radar uses reflected radio signals to help locate objects. It would guide the telescope toward something that needed a closer look.
Software using AI would help sort the observations. Another tool would split an object's light to study its properties, a method called spectroscopy. Together, the equipment could gather more detail after the wider system spotted an object.
Development was expected to start in November 2026 and finish about a year later. That schedule would depend on construction and testing.
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Giving the Next Dot Somewhere to Go
NASA's 2023 report on unidentified sightings described a familiar problem: missing background information and measurements that had not been properly checked. Several carefully tested instruments can help fill those gaps.
That finding explains why better measurements matter. It does not endorse Galileo or assess the project's later results.
For a useful Galileo sighting, another researcher should be able to follow the event through the records. Where was the object? When did it move? Did separate instruments agree? Enough detail could allow someone else to test an explanation, including an ordinary one.
The planned telescope adds a practical challenge. Once the system spots a moving point, it has to turn toward it fast enough to record the details.
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