NASA dismisses reports of a pending announcement by the agency on discovery of alien life

Washington: NASA has no announcements to make about the discovery of alien life, a spokesperson said, dismissing media reports which claimed that the US space agency was about to discover extraterrestrial life. Last week, the hacking group Anonymous posted a video on YouTube suggesting that NASA is about to announce the discovery of life beyond Earth. [caption id=“attachment_3750015” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. News18[/caption] “Contrary to some reports, there’s no pending announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life,” NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen said in a Twitter post. “Are we alone in the universe? While we do not know yet, we have missions moving forward that may help answer that fundamental question,” Zurbuchen added in tweet. Anonymous’ video focused on a testimony Zurbuchen gave in April during a hearing of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. During the hearing, called “Advances in the Search for Life,” Zurbuchen laid out the progress NASA has been making in the hunt for life in the cosmos. He cited thousands of exoplanets spotted by the Kepler space telescope, the recent discovery of hydrogen in the geysers blasting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and the possible detection of water-vapour plumes emanating from the Jovian satellite Europa, ‘Space.com’ reported. “Taking into account all of the different activities and missions that are specifically searching for evidence of alien life, we are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history,” Zurbuchen said during the hearing. In the recent video, Anonymous highlighted just the second half of this sentence. “NASA: ‘Mankind is about to discover extraterrestrial life,’” an Anonymous spokesman wearing the group’s famous Guy Fawkes mask said in the video.