Nasa is to engage a global army of citizen sky watchers to help it solve the mystery of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, and search for life on other worlds. The space agency has also appointed its first director of UAP research – a de facto chief of UFO studies – to coordinate its efforts to help explain the unknown, it announced on Thursday, as it unveiled a science-based “road map” to collect future data. New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will be crucial to the effort to advance analytical techniques, officials said at a morning briefing to release a year-long study by an independent panel investigating the phenomena. Crucially, Nasa says it wants to eliminate the stigma that surrounds the reporting of sightings by the public, especially private, commercial and military pilots. The goal is to “shift the conversation about UAP from sensationalism to science”, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson told reporters. “There is a mindset. We all are entertained by Indiana Jones in the Amazon, and finding the Crystal Skull, so there’s a lot of folklore out there. That’s why we entered the arena, to try to get into this from a science point of view.” The plan to recruit the public is one of the key recommendations in the 34-page report, compiled by a team of 16 experts named last year to the nine-month study of UAP and the accuracy of data surrounding it. It suggests a crowdsourcing system, such as open-source smartphone-based apps, could be used to “gather imaging data and other smartphone sensor data from multiple citizen observers as part of a wider effort to more systematically gather public UAP reports”. The director of UAP research, who isn’t yet being named, in part because of online abuse the panel received while it was drawing up its conclusions, has already begun work, and will be Nasa’s chief liaison with wider government investigations of UAP. “Some things panel members received during the study were simple trolling, and some rose to actual threats,” said Dan Evans, Nasa’s assistant deputy associate administrator for research. “We take the sanctity of the scientific process and the security and safety of our team extremely seriously. Science needs to be free, science needs to undergo a real and rigorous and rational process, and you need the freedom of thought to be able to do that.” Panel chair David Spergel, president of Simons Foundation, said almost all UAP had a logical scientific explanation. The report includes examples such as weather balloons, commercial aircraft and military sensors all reported as UFOs. “It is essential to clarify, based on current findings and methodology, that we find no evidence to suggest that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin,” he said. “Most events are explainable as planes, balloons, drones, weather phenomenon and instrument features. In any search for interesting anomalies the first step is to eliminate the chaff of conventional events before moving on to identify novel phenomena. In this, the public’s role cannot be overstated.” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the agency’s science mission directorate, said the stigma of reporting had contributed to a dearth of accurate scientific data that would allow experts to easier explain the origins and nature of UAP. “We’re scientists, we love data, and if there is something that needs to be reported we want people to be able to feel that they can report that,” she said. “We did not tolerate any of the abuse that some members of the panel were receiving, so absolutely we want private pilots, commercial pilots, military pilots, to feel that if they see something they need to report it. “Despite numerous accounts and visuals, the absence of consistent, detailed, and curated observations means we do not presently have the body of data needed to make definitive, scientific conclusions about UAP.” Nelson pushed back on suggestions that Nasa may be hiding evidence about extraterrestrial life, and said the agency would always be truthful and open about all of its findings. Earlier this year, a former defense department intelligence analyst claimed the US government had possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles, while a “surreal” congressional hearing in July heard further unsubstantiated allegations of a high-level cover-up involving UFOs and alien life-forms. “What he said, if I recall, was that he had a friend that knew where a warehouse was that had an UFO locked up in a warehouse, and he also said he had another friend that said that he had parts of an alien, or whatever,” Nelson said. “A long time ago there was a TV show, Joe Friday, and he used to say, ‘just the facts, just the facts’. Where’s the evidence? That’s my response.”