CAPELLA: AAWSAP's Global UFO Mega-Database

Under contract to AAWSAP, BAASS tasked scientist Jacques Vallée — a French UFO researcher and computer scientist with decades of casework — to build a centralized UFO case repository. A team of roughly 20 to 25 staff, including many translators, spent two years assembling the system, which Vallée named 'CAPELLA'. It consolidated nearly 250,000 cases from eleven separate databases, incorporating witness testimonies, photographs, videos, sketches, and analytical reports.

The sources spanned the full breadth of historical and international research: the US government programs Project Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book; the Spanish UFOCAT database; MUFON's case management system; and records from Canadian and British government archives. BAASS actively recruited international researchers, including Canadian researcher Christopher Rutkowski and Australian researcher Bill Chalker, to feed the database with non-US material.

In May 2009, BAASS operatives traveled to the Brazilian state of Ceará — a region known for reported UFO encounters with physical injuries — to gather field data on propulsion systems. Starting February 11, 2010, BAASS formally took over the FAA's UFO reporting hotline, previously operated by NIDS, routing all civilian sighting reports directly into their intelligence pipeline.