To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) was a hybrid public benefit corporation founded in October 2017 by musician and entrepreneur Tom DeLonge alongside a team of former senior U.S. defense, intelligence, and aerospace officials. Its founding coincided with — and directly enabled — the most significant UAP disclosure event of the modern era: the December 2017 New York Times exposé that revealed the existence of the Pentagon’s classified AATIP program and published three declassified Navy UAP videos for the first time. In the years that followed, TTSA became the primary civilian vehicle through which former government insiders pushed for UAP transparency, engaged Congress, and brought UAP to mainstream public attention through documentary media.
Foundation & Founding Team
Tom DeLonge — lead guitarist of the rock band Blink-182 and longtime UAP researcher — formally launched TTSA in October 2017 after years of back-channel engagement with U.S. defense and intelligence officials. The founding team was extraordinary by any measure of government credentialing: it included Luis Elizondo, the former military intelligence officer who identified himself as AATIP’s program manager; Christopher Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Harold “Hal” Puthoff, a physicist and co-founder of EarthTech International with a long history of classified government research; Steve Justice, the former director of Advanced Systems at Lockheed’s Skunk Works division; Jim Semivan, a former senior CIA officer; and Paul Rapp, a cognitive neuroscientist and former military researcher.
The organization was structured as a public benefit corporation with two functional divisions: an arts and entertainment arm (focused on film, television, music, and publishing) and a science and aerospace arm intended to conduct independent research into UAP-related technologies and phenomena. TTSA’s stated dual mission was to accelerate public disclosure of UAP through credible media and to pursue legitimate scientific investigation of the phenomenon.
The Three Navy UAP Videos
TTSA’s most consequential early act was releasing three classified Navy infrared videos that had been provided to Christopher Mellon by a Defense Department contact. The videos — designated “Tic Tac,” “Gimbal,” and “GoFast” — captured UAP encounters by U.S. Navy aviators in 2004 and 2015 and had never been publicly disclosed. TTSA provided them simultaneously to The New York Times and released them independently. The resulting Times article on December 16, 2017 (by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean) disclosed the existence of the AATIP program, identified Elizondo as a key figure, and published the Tic Tac footage — triggering a wave of congressional inquiry that has not abated since.
The three videos were formally declassified and released by the U.S. Navy on April 27, 2020, confirming their authenticity. The Tic Tac footage documented a November 14, 2004 encounter off the coast of southern California in which Commander David Fravor intercepted an object approximately 40 feet in length with no visible propulsion, control surfaces, or exhaust plume that demonstrated maneuverability far beyond the capability of any known aircraft. Gimbal and GoFast depicted 2015 encounters by F/A-18 aviators from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, with Gimbal showing an object that appeared to rotate against the wind and GoFast showing an object moving at extraordinary speed close to the ocean surface.
History Channel & Public Advocacy
TTSA’s entertainment division produced Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, a two-season documentary series on the History Channel (2019–2020). The series featured Elizondo and Mellon using their government contacts to investigate UAP cases on camera, including the USS Nimitz encounter and the USS Theodore Roosevelt incidents. The show brought UAP testimony from active and former military pilots to a mass television audience and contributed significantly to normalizing the topic in mainstream discourse.
In parallel, Mellon and other TTSA advisors worked actively on Capitol Hill, briefing members of Congress and Senate staff and helping to develop legislative language for the UAP provisions that appeared in the 2020 and subsequent National Defense Authorization Acts. TTSA served as a critical bridge between former insiders who wanted the government to take UAP seriously and the congressional offices with the authority to compel institutional action.
The ADAM Research Project & U.S. Army CRADA
TTSA’s science division pursued the ADAM (Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials) Research Project, an initiative to analyze physical materials alleged to have anomalous properties — including samples claimed to have originated from UAP encounters. In October 2019, TTSA announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC), a formal partnership that allowed the Army to analyze materials of interest and potentially access TTSA’s research. The CRADA was a significant milestone: it was the first formal agreement between a UAP-focused private organization and a branch of the U.S. military for joint materials research.
Decline & Legacy
By 2021–2022, TTSA had scaled back significantly. Several founding members, including Elizondo and Mellon, had departed or reduced their involvement. The aerospace and science division largely wound down. The Army CRADA concluded without any publicly disclosed findings. DeLonge continued to operate the entertainment and publishing arm of the organization, which has remained active as a media brand. The departure of key government-credentialed personnel reflected, in part, the fact that the institutional goal TTSA was founded to achieve — compelling the U.S. government to take UAP seriously and investigate it formally — had to a significant degree been accomplished: the UAP Task Force existed, the 2021 ODNI report had been published, and Congress was actively legislating on UAP.
TTSA’s legacy is its role as the primary catalyst of the modern UAP disclosure era. No other private organization has had a comparable impact on U.S. government policy in this domain. The people it brought together — Elizondo, Mellon, Puthoff, Justice — provided the credentialing and institutional access that allowed UAP to break through the mainstream media barrier in December 2017, and the congressional advocacy they conducted in the years that followed shaped the legislative architecture that governs UAP investigation today.