British chemist and astronaut Helen Sharman says aliens definitely exist and could be "here right now" living among us on Earth.
“There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life,” Sharman told the Observer Sunday. “Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not, " she added, reports the BBC.
Sharman, Great Britain’s first astronaut, spent eight days in space when she was 27, making her one of the youngest people ever to enter orbit.
The Pentagon last May admitted it investigates reports of UFOs, or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” with a Department of Defense spokesman telling the New York Post about a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
The program pursued “research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Sharman isn’t the only astronaut who believes aliens exist.
Colonel Gordon Cooper became an outspoken believer in UFOs following his NASA career and charged that the U.S. government was covering up its knowledge of extraterrestrial activity.
Cooper died in 2004.