UFOs again took center stage in Washington D.C. Tuesday as the U.S. Senate held a hearing that attempted to explain away some sightings while raising questions about at least one unexplained close encounter.

The Senate hearing follows on the heels of a U.S. House of Representatives proceedings last week that alluded to a number of provocative satellite images never seen before by the public.

Chaired by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Armed Services Committee Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee hearing discussed the work of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a new office established by Congress in 2022 to investigate unidentified strange phenomena for the Department of Defense.

Testifying before the committee, AARO Director Jon T. Kosloski said that while there are still cases to be examined, others, like the 2015 “Go Fast” UFO sighting, where a US Navy fighter pilot recorded video of a fast-moving object over the ocean surface near the Florida coast, may have been, in part, an optical illusion.

“Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the app object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet,” Kosloski said. “As the platform is flying and capturing the object, if it is closer to the platform at a higher altitude, a trick of the eye called parallax makes it look like the object is moving much faster.”

In another case, Kosloski said lights that witnesses said were UAPs turned out to be Starlink flares. Kosloski also highlighted a case in 2013 when a customs and border patrol aircraft witnessed an object flying over an airport in Puerto Rico.

“We assess that the object, likely a pair of balloons or sky lanterns, was floating at about seven knots over the airport and descending to about 200 meters,” he said, adding that the video of the incident would be released with a report later this year.

Despite this, Kosloski said not every UAP sighting could be explained away so easily.

“To be clear, AARO does not believe every object is a bird, a balloon, or a UAV,” he said. “We do have some very anomalous objects. It's just the nature of resolution. We can only resolve things that we understand.”

Kosloski then told the committee about an unnamed law enforcement officer who reported seeing a UAP the size of a midsize car that he called a “blacker-than-black” object.

“He said it was about the size of a Prius, four to six feet wide. And as he got 40 to 60 meters away from the object, it tilted up about 45 degrees, and then it shot up vertically, 10 to 100 times faster than any drone he's ever seen before,” Kosloski recalled. “It did that without making a sound, as far as he could tell from inside of his vehicle.”

Kosloski testified that the witness said that as the UAP left his field of view through his windshield, it emitted bright red and blue lights that illuminated the inside of his vehicle “as brightly as if someone had set off fireworks just outside his vehicle, or street flares.” Kosloski did not say when the incident occurred.

According to Kosloski, AARO is working on new technology that will allow the agency to inform the public, Congress, and others of the UAPs as they are being studied rather than once they have resolved them.

The Senate hearing on UAPs coincides with political shifts in Washington, as Representative Tim Burchett called on President-elect Donald Trump to prioritize transparency in UAP investigations.

“This isn’t all about finding little green men or flying saucers,” Burchett wrote. “It’s about forcing federal bureaucracies like the Pentagon to be transparent with the American people.”

While the hearing did not break new ground in the hunt for alien life, the Senate, like the House, was adamant that the hearings would continue and ask witnesses to continue coming forward.

“When unidentified anomalous phenomenon enter our airspace, we need to know about it. We need to identify it. But in order to do that, we need to reduce the stigma and credibility challenges associated with these events,” Gillibrand said.

“Our service members, scientists, foreign partners, and the general public need to know that their reporting, research, and analysis will be taken seriously and acted on in good faith.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair