Washington DC - NASA is joining the UFO craze by commissioning an independent study on "unidentified aerial phenomena".

NASA said Thursday that UAPs – the preferred term at government agencies – are of interest for air safety and national security, stressing that there is "no evidence" they are "are extra-terrestrial in origin."

The study, which is set to begin in the fall and take about nine months to complete, will seek to examine "events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena" through a "scientific perspective."

The new UAPs team, led by astrophysicist David Spergel, will focus on how to best collect data and use it to better understand the phenomena by collaborating with experts in scientific, aeronautics, and data analytics communities.

"Given the paucity of observations, our first task is simply to gather the most robust set of data that we can," Spergel said.

NASA said the report would be shared publicly and stressed that though the study had been agreed with the US government, it is a separate investigation.

Last year, the US Department of Defense (DoD) published an eagerly awaited report by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) on the subject, which identified at least 144 "unexplained" aerial phenomena over the past two decades.

The assessment found that UAPs posed a security risk to air travel and could potentially pose a national security risk to the US.

In response, the DoD ordered the development of a plan to formalize the task force's mission.

In May, Congress held the first public hearing on the subject in half a century.