UFO Tracker 🛸

Live at ufot.tech

An interactive map of 96,000+ UFO sightings from the NUFORC database, combined with 97 declassified U.S. government UAP documents from the PURSUE program (war.gov/UFO). Data is updated nightly.

---

Features

• 96,763 civilian sightings (1940–2026) from NUFORC, plotted as color-coded dots by shape
• 97 declassified government UAP files from the May 8, 2026 PURSUE release — FBI, Department of War, NASA, and State Dept. — each linking to the official source document
• Filter by shape, year range, and country
• Recent sightings feed
• Mobile-responsive with bottom sheet navigation
• Dark map, no ads, free

---

Data Sources

Source	Records	Coverage
NUFORC	96,763 sightings	1940–2026
war.gov/UFO (PURSUE)	162 documents (97 geolocated)	1944–2026

NUFORC Data

The civilian sighting data comes from the National UFO Reporting Center. The 1940–2014 records are seeded from the TidyTuesday NUFORC CSV. Records from 2015–2026 are scraped directly from nuforc.org using Playwright.

Government UAP Files

The PURSUE program (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters) released 162 declassified documents on May 8, 2026. The structured index is mirrored at DenisSergeevitch/UFO-USA. Records without mappable coordinates (Moon, Low Earth Orbit, classified locations) are excluded from the map.

---

Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4
• Map: Leaflet.js (imperative, no react-leaflet due to React 19 peer conflict)
• Database: SQLite via better-sqlite3
• Scraping: Playwright (Chromium) for post-2014 NUFORC data
• Geocoding: Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) for missing coordinates
• Deployment: Docker + nginx on DigitalOcean, Let's Encrypt SSL

---

Getting Started

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Seed the database

# Seed NUFORC civilian sightings (downloads CSV ~80k records)
python3 scripts/seed.py

# Seed government UAP files (downloads from GitHub mirror of war.gov CSV)
python3 scripts/seed_gov_files.py

# Optional: scrape post-2014 NUFORC records (requires Playwright + Chromium)
npx playwright install chromium
node scripts/scrape_nuforc_playwright.js

3. Run the dev server

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

---

Project Structure

app/
  page.tsx              # Main page
  api/
    sightings/          # Filtered sightings endpoint
    recent/             # Latest 20 sightings
    gov-files/          # Declassified government UAP files
    stats/              # DB health check
components/
  UFOMap.tsx            # Leaflet map (imperative)
  FilterPanel.tsx       # Shape / country / year filters
  RecentFeed.tsx        # Live sightings sidebar
  SightingPopup.tsx     # Civilian sighting detail modal
  GovFilePopup.tsx      # Government file detail modal
  SupportModal.tsx      # Solana donation modal
lib/
  db.ts                 # SQLite singleton + TypeScript interfaces
scripts/
  seed.py               # Seed NUFORC CSV → SQLite
  seed_gov_files.py     # Seed PURSUE CSV → SQLite gov_files table
  scrape_nuforc_playwright.js  # Scrape nuforc.org post-2014
  geocode.py            # Geocode missing coordinates via Nominatim
public/
  logo.svg              # UFO Tracker logo
data/
  sightings.db          # SQLite database (not committed — run seed scripts)

---

Database Schema

-- Civilian sightings
CREATE TABLE sightings (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  datetime TEXT,
  year INTEGER,
  city TEXT,
  state TEXT,
  country TEXT,
  shape TEXT,
  duration_seconds REAL,
  comments TEXT,
  date_posted TEXT,
  lat REAL,
  lng REAL
);

-- Declassified government UAP files
CREATE TABLE gov_files (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  title TEXT,
  agency TEXT,
  doc_type TEXT,        -- PDF, VID, IMG
  incident_date TEXT,
  location_text TEXT,
  lat REAL,
  lng REAL,
  description TEXT,
  file_url TEXT,        -- Direct link to war.gov PDF/image
  dvids_id TEXT,        -- DVIDS video ID if applicable
  redacted INTEGER,     -- 0 or 1
  color TEXT            -- Hex color by agency
);

---

Deployment

See server-setup.sh for one-time DigitalOcean droplet setup and deploy.sh for redeployment.

./deploy.sh

The deploy script rsyncs source files, builds the Docker image on the server, and restarts the container.

---

License

Data is sourced from public government and nonprofit databases. Code is MIT.