Space Archaeology: A Science in the Making.

As interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) grows, scientists are becoming increasingly eager to search our solar system for evidence of past extraterrestrial civilisations.

In an article dated April 2, 2026, it was revealed that scientific teams at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE/SC), have discovered an unprecedented set of asteroid detections. These include hundreds of distant worlds beyond Neptune and 33 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids. According to preliminary data, scientists have discovered more than 11,000 new asteroids. This data has been confirmed by the Minor Planet Center (MPC).

In an article titled “The Rubin Observatory Could Discover Corner Reflectors or Artificial Lights in the Outer Solar System,” Avi Loeb makes the following observations:

“In 2012, I published a paper […] which showed that existing optical telescopes and surveys can detect artificially-illuminated objects comparable in total brightness to a major terrestrial city out to the outskirts of the Solar System. […] This idea is particularly feasible now with the Rubin Observatory.”

“Another interesting class of objects that would follow the inverse-square brightening law are corner reflectors along the Sun-Earth axis. […] The Rubin Observatory or other survey telescopes resemble the eyes of a fly hovering near a lamppost and looking away for reflected light from objects in the dark street.”

“Here’s hoping that the Rubin Observatory will show evidence for either sources of artificial light or a corner reflector. Any such detection will surely make our life on Earth far more exciting.”

Avi Loeb’s predictions have already begun to materialise in terms of available observations that may one day support scientific models, such as the Galileo project.

What exactly is archaeology?

Before we proceed with our analysis of this emerging science, it is advisable to briefly review the fundamentals of the subject: what is archaeology? This subject can be traced back several thousand years, to a time before telescopes were invented. The word ‘archaeology’ is derived from the Greek term ἀρχαιολογία ‘arkhaiologia’, which is derived from ἀρχαῖος ‘arkhaîos’, meaning ‘ancient’, and λόγος ‘logos’, meaning ‘discourse, word, study, science’. More specifically, it is derived from the Attic dialect, the variant of Ancient Greek spoken in the Athens region. Attic is often considered the ‘classical’ form of the language, as it was used by great authors such as Plato, Sophocles, and Thucydides, and served as the basis for the literary language of most of Antiquity.

In other words, archaeology is literally the science of ancient things; moreover, it should be noted that this discipline is not the exclusive domain of Western culture. For example, in Chinese, the modern term is 考古学 (kǎogǔxué), where 考 (kǎo): to examine, study, verify; 古 (gǔ): ancient, antiquity; 学 (xuē): study, science.

Unlike the Greek archaiologia (discourse on the ancient), Chinese emphasizes the act of investigation and concrete verification (考). This reflects a very ancient scholarly tradition, that of “evidential philology” (考据学, kǎojùxué) developed during the Qing Dynasty (17th–18th centuries), in which classical texts were verified by examining inscriptions on bone, bronze, or stone.

As a result, the meaning of the word “archaeology” in the modern sense is, in itself, a form of syncretism between the philosophy of the ancient Greeks—more driven by logos—and Chinese evidential philosophy, which likely emerged through exchanges such as those of 16th-century Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci, who adopted a strategy of cultural accommodation, embracing the scholarly practices of Confucian scholars.

After all, as the saying of Ambrose of Milan goes: si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sicut ibi . Literally: “If you are in Rome, live as the Romans do; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there”.

Modern archaeology and deep space

Let us now return to the 21st century after this brief historical digression. As we saw earlier, the ancients were already fond of studying their own roots. The question therefore arises as to how this can be applied to the conquest of space. The subject is immediately more complex, and for a simple reason: the lack of artefacts. Space archaeology is still in its infancy. On Earth, archaeology has benefited from hundreds of years of expertise, tens of thousands of human artefacts to study, classify, analyse stratigraphy, and so on. But when we start looking up at the sky and observing the heavens, everything changes. Human history – even if we include prehistory – spans hundreds of thousands of years. Space, and thus exogenous potential, is measured in an entirely different unit: eons, where one eon equals one billion Earth years. This science currently finds itself in a sort of temporal paradox that might remind one of the early days of Egyptology.

To quote a famous 20th-century statement by Flinders Petrie:

In few kinds of work are the results so directly dependent on the personality of the worker as they are in excavating. […] Of late years the notion of digging merely for profitable spoil, or to yield a new excitement to the jaded, has spread unpleasantly at least in Egypt. A concession to dig is sought much like a grant of a monastery at the Dissolution : the man who has influence or push, a title or a trade connection, claims to try his luck at the spoils of the land. Gold digging has at least no moral responsibility […] but spoiling the past has an acute moral wrong in it […].

A closer look at the current methodology of space archaeology reveals that professionals use the concept of SETA, or Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts, which was introduced in the 1980s as a complement to SETI, which listens to space in search of signals. This approach is based on the idea that artifacts, unlike radio signals, can persist for millions, even billions of years. It thus circumvents SETI’s major problem: the need for a civilization to transmit a signal at precisely the moment we are listening. The Galileo project, led by Avi Loeb, is the most widely publicized initiative currently embodying this approach.

The search can take several forms: analyzing radar anomalies, looking for artificial light reflections, detecting abnormal heat, or analyzing the chemical composition of soils to find industrial residues. However, this method is far from universally accepted in its current form. Milan Ćirković, a Serbian astronomer and astrophysicist, coined the concept of SETI’s Catch-22, inspired by a 1961 short story by Joseph Heller, which describes an absurd situation where one is trapped in a vicious cycle of contradictory rules. In Heller’s version, a pilot who requests a psychological evaluation to be declared “insane” and stop flying proves, by the very act of requesting it, that he is of sound mind… and must therefore continue his dangerous missions.

What Milan describes with SETA’s Catch-22 is a circular validation rule:

To prove that an object is artificial, one must first prove that it is not natural. But to prove that it is not natural, one must already know what natural looks like—yet this knowledge could be contaminated by undetected artifacts.

The technosignature framework is inherently anthropocentric in nature, as it is designed to detect civilisations that resemble our own but are more advanced. Consequently, it fails to account for complex non-technological biological civilisations or those that operate in radically different ways, such as chemical, biological or quantum without EM emissions.

In her 2001 journal article, ‘The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)’, Jill Tarter, a pioneering figure in the field of extraterrestrial intelligence and co-founder and board member of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), provides insights on this subject.

Intelligence is just as difficult to define as life and impossible to detect at a distance. All searches for extraterrestrial intelligence are in fact searches for extraterrestrial technologies revealed through physical artifacts, energetic particles, or electromagnetic radiation.

Missing Data According to Ross Coulthart

In a program that aired a few days ago on News Nations, Ross, accompanied by Meagan Medick, editorial producer for the news channel, the investigative journalist revisited an incident dating back to May 2023 :

I’d also like to ask about what I personally saw in Huntsville at the Marshall Space Center when I was there for the scientific coalition for the study of UAP’s conference in May of 2023. And what I saw in the company of a former wife of a NASA administrator herself uh and also in the in the company of another individual. Three of us witnessed this.

About eight or nine eggshaped objects, clearly anomalous,emerged from behind the space station as we were watching watching on a monitor and moved across screen. When I confronted and asked the director of the Marshall Space Center about those objects, what the hell were they? I thought they might be Starlink satellites that had just been released. He said,”No, they’re not Starlinks.” He turned and he looked at the young lady who was responsible for the administration of communications with the space station.

She flicked a switch and all of a sudden the screen went dead and up came a sign saying transmission to the space station has been temporarily interrupted. I saw it for myself and I for the life of me can’t explain what I saw other than that it looked suspicious that all of a sudden anomalous objects were showing themselves to us on the screen and a decision was made inside NASA to hide those objects from public view. And as soon as I tried to ask the director of the Marshall Space Center about what it was we saw, you know what he did? He left the room and didn’t come back.

His testimony is that of an observer, not a scientist, and it proves nothing about the nature of the objects in question. However, what he documents is real and verifiable: there is a recurring phenomenon of interruptions in the ISS live feed during the appearance of unidentified objects, captured dozens of times by civilian observers since the 2010s. NASA systematically attributes these to automatic technical interruptions. While this explanation is plausible, it has not been sufficiently independently verified. In the case of Ross Coulthart’s testimony, however, the interruption appears to have been intentional on the part of an employee. Nevertheless, a simple Google search reveals a pattern of causal links between NASA and the DoD, which suggests that the interruptions in question may be part of a standard procedure resulting from the compartmentalization of information.

Swedish researcher Beatriz Villarroel, an astrophysicist at Nordita (Stockholm), is seeking to fill a significant gap in her research with her VASCO and ExoProbe projects. VASCO (Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations) involves a comparison of astronomical photographic plates dating from before 1957 (before Sputnik, and thus before any human presence in orbit) with modern data to identify transients: light sources that appear or disappear without any known explanation. Several dozen candidates have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Villarroel’s work is distinguished by its rigorous approach, which sets it apart from its competitors. Rather than offering sweeping conclusions, it meticulously documents anomalies and proposes methods to test them. His team has also been transparent about the limitations of their work, acknowledging that VASCO transients may have conventional explanations, such as photographic artefacts, uncataloged Soviet-era satellites, or calibration errors. This is not just a sign of humility; it is a reflection of the scientific process as it continues to evolve.

The connection to Coulthart’s testimony is less about mutual confirmation and more about a convergence of issues. If unrecorded objects exist in orbit, regardless of their nature, they require independent civilian observation tools capable of producing data that institutions cannot filter or classify. This is where ExoProbe comes in. This project falls within the scope of space archaeology, not as confirmation of a hypothesis, but as a rigorous detection infrastructure for a science that is still in its early stages.

ExoProbe goes further by being a network of coordinated civilian telescopes actively searching for unlisted artificial objects in near-Earth orbit, using the Earth’s shadow as a natural filter to eliminate known human satellites. The approach is methodologically sound; it produces verifiable data, publishes its protocols, and operates within the peer-reviewed framework that Loeb, paradoxically, has often bypassed.

The Legal and Regulatory Framework of NASA-DoD Protocols

If we take a closer look at the mechanisms and protocols of censorship within NASA—much as an archaeologist or historian might do—this actually reflects the reality of the profession, far removed from the sensationalist headlines in the press. The archaeologist will spend a lot of time in the archives, while the historian will pore over obscure parchments, most often written in dead languages.

But what happens if we apply the same methodology to them? Well, we might find things like Executive Order 13526 of the NASA Information Security Program (14 CFR Part 1203). This program, which coordinates its actions with the Department of Defense, aims in particular to ensure “reasonable coordination and consistency with other government departments and agencies” (14 CFR § 1203.201).

The National Aeronautics and Space Act explicitly grants the NASA Administrator the authority to establish “the security requirements, restrictions, and safeguards he deems necessary in the interest of national security.” In other words, Ross Coulthart’s observation can be supported by the administrative mechanisms of the institution in question.

And to quote J. Robert Oppenheimer (Father of the Atomic Bomb, in 1955):

There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.

Or Leo Szilard (inventor of the nuclear chain reaction):

“The most powerful weapon of the Manhattan Project was not the A-Bomb, it was the SECRET stamp.”

The science historian Alex Wellerstein, a renowned expert on nuclear secrecy, is unequivocally credited with a version of this statement: “The SECRET stamp is the most powerful weapon ever invented.” It appears, notably, in his book *Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States* and features on the homepage of his widely read blog on the subject.

To sum up, an outside observer might say that this represents a paradox: science relies on observable phenomena to formulate theories intended to explain reality. When one analyses the actual nature of the correspondence between the scientists who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory – namely Jack Parsons and Edward Forman, for example – one finds exchanges with Wernher von Braun, the inventor of the V2 rocket, who was himself later transferred to the US via Operation Paperclip. He was appointed director of the Marshall Space Flight Centre, which may seem somewhat ironic and illustrative of the tension between the military’s rhetoric and the reality of scientific collaboration, which requires cooperation between people. Yet the mechanisms of censorship seem rather to slow down our understanding of the UFO phenomenon. On the one hand, the military justifies censorship on grounds of budgets or defence; on the other, this very censorship creates a bottleneck in knowledge.

The great silence of the institutions

The Smithsonian, the British Museum and the Louvre simply do not have a department dedicated to the possibility of space archaeology. Within the framework of traditional archaeology, this concept is immediately dismissed as pseudo-archaeology or science fiction in the vein of ‘Ancient Aliens’. However, voices are beginning to be heard:
Kathryn Denning (Anthropologist and archaeologist, York University): Her work focuses on the ethical and social issues surrounding the search for life in the universe, including the implications of discovering artefacts. She applies a genuine anthropological perspective to SETI and SETA.

NASA – Douglas Vakoch (Archaeologist): This is probably the most official initiative. Vakoch, an archaeologist, led the publication in 2014 of the book *Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication* for NASA. The book explicitly explores how archaeology and anthropology can inform the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Although Douglas Vakoch’s work is also caught in a Catch-22 situation, the book is a kind of study that compares elements such as Mycenaean Linear B with what might constitute an exogenous script, yet without proposing a non-anthropocentric analytical framework…

Among the honourable mentions, we might also cite the article: ‘A call for proactive xenoarchaeological guidelines – Scientific, policy and socio-political considerations’, written by Ben W. McGee, an ‘interdisciplinary geoscientist’ who works as a radiation protection engineer and part-time lecturer at a community college (College of Southern Nevada).

Incidentally, it is curious that the term ‘xenoarchaeological’ might bring to mind an obscure parchment from the Imperial Library of Terra in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; however, the use of ‘exo’ or ‘xeno’ stems from a distinction rooted, once again, in Attic Greek:

Exo (from the Greek exō, ‘outside’): refers to the extraterrestrial origin of the object of study. We use the term ‘exo-archaeology’ to denote the study of material remains originating from somewhere other than Earth, whether these remains are natural (e.g. meteorites) or artificial (e.g. potential probes). The prefix emphasises the origin’s foreignness to our planet.
Xeno (from the Greek xenos, ‘foreign, different’): refers to radical otherness, to that which is fundamentally non-human in its nature, intention and cognition. The prefix emphasises cognitive and technological strangeness, not merely geographical.

A science still seeking its foundations

Space archaeology is a field that exists more in intentions than in protocols. It has a potential subject of study—exogenous artefacts—but does not yet possess the methodological tools to identify them rigorously. Ćirković’s Catch-22 is not a philosophical curiosity: it is the fundamental obstacle that the discipline must overcome before it can claim the status of a fully-fledged science.

What is sorely lacking is what terrestrial archaeology has taken centuries to build: a reference stratigraphy, comparative assemblages, an operational definition of the artefact, and above all an interdisciplinary community including field practitioners—not just astrophysicists dreaming aloud in their Medium articles.
The quotation from Flinders Petrie at the start of this article is not insignificant. In 1904, excavations in Egypt resembled what space archaeology is today: a field of endeavour where enthusiasm and media hype far outstrip method. The difference is that Petrie had artefacts under his feet. Loeb, for his part, still hopes to find some.

This does not mean the approach is without value. Tools are being refined, protocols are emerging, and voices such as those of Kathryn Denning and Douglas Vakoch are finally introducing the anthropological and archaeological rigour the field requires. The Vera C. Rubin Telescope will produce unprecedented data. The question is not whether the discipline will take shape, but how, and whether it will have the patience to lay its methodological foundations before proclaiming its discoveries.
In the meantime, space archaeology remains what it is: a serious promise in a field still under construction. Like any excavation that is just beginning.