People have reported that they saw UFOs for a long time. Reports have come from all over the world. The government claims that there are no UFOs, but some people think they are covering up the truth.

The most famous UFO story is that on July 2 , 1947 a spaceship crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and that people saw dead aliens at the scene. When the military came, they took everything away. People say they keep the remains of the aliens and the spaceship at a base called Area 51. It is off-limits to most people. The military has said that it never happened.

Recently, a film was found that shows the military dissection of two of the alien corpses in 1947. The aliens look at lot like humans. People don't know if the film is real or fake.  What do you think?

Real Aliens

Fake Aliens

For a detailed account of the Roswell Incident, go to Aliens - UFOs.Com Area 51

Alien photos courtesty of area51 Central

Reports of Sightings from NASA Astronauts -

Gordon Cooper - Mercury astronaut - May 15, 1963 - while orbiting Earth, he told Ground Control that he could see a glowing, greenish object that was coming close to his capsule.

James Lovell and Frank Borman - Gemini astronauts - December 1965, while orbiting Earth, they reported they saw an UFO. Ground control told them it was part of their booster rocket, but they said they could see that too, and this was different.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - Apollo 11 astronauts - on July 21, 1969 - an unconfirmed report says they both reported seeing UFOs when they landed on the Moon.

For every report, NASA decided that the observations were not "abnormal" in the space environment.

Find out more at UFO Sightings by Astronauts

What is the U.S. government doing to investigate UFOs?

Both the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and NASA have done independent studies to see if there were aliens. The Air Force investigated UFOs with their Project Blue Book from 1947 to 1969. Of 12,618 sightings reported, 701 remained "unidentified." The Air Force decided the "unidentified" sightings were not extraterrestrial vehicles.

In 1977, NASA was asked if they wanted to study UFOs again. They said no, since they had never found any evidence that life exists on other planets, or that UFOs are related to aliens.

In October 1992, NASA begin a search for artificial radio signals from space. They did not detect any confirmed signals before the search was stopped in 1993.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI Institute) took over the project. The SETI Institute does research in astronomy and planetary sciences.

To learn more, go to the SETI Institute website.

How do we search for alien life in the Universe?

Most of the search for extraterrestrial life has been done with radio telescopes. They are special telescopes that detect low energy radio waves.

Low energy waves are emitted by many cosmic sources such as stars and planets. Scientists search for signs of life by looking at individual star systems. Each star is examined for possible planets that may be orbiting it.

The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico (shown at right) studies extraterrestrial radio waves.