There are currently quite 100,000 satellites orbiting the world , from space junk, to high tech probes transmitting signals back to Earth. But one among these satellites is assumed to be of extraterrestrial origin and has been circling our planet, before the launch of Sputnik. This mysterious spacecraft is understood because the Black Knight satellite, imagined to be of alien provenance and covered up by NASA for quite 60 years.
While most Man-Made satellites orbit in prograde, thanks to the convenience and fuel efficiency of using the Earth natural gravitational pull, the Black Knight is claimed to orbit in retrograde, adding to its curious nature. But is it actually an alien satellite monitoring our planet, or just a thermal space blanket like NASA has claimed photo evidence of it to be?
Back Story
The first apparent a part of this story begins with signals heard by Tesla (1856-1943) an excellent Serbian inventor (and described by many because of his often eccentric behaviour and opinions as a real mad scientist) who spent most of his career within the USA.
He was an engineer and produced works which explored the thought of radio and wireless transmissions. In 1899, he reportedly intercepted a sign unlike any of the natural sources from Earth like electrical storms that he had already investigated in his experiments. Instead he announced that regular signals must be coming from an intelligent outside source, potentially inhabitants of Mars.
Tesla never claimed to possess heard signals from a satellite orbiting Earth. Today there are those that say he was taking note of a transmission from an orbiting satellite of unknown origin later called by some the Black Knight.
It is slightly more likely, though still very faraway from probable, that what was Tesla detected wasn’t an orbiting satellite but instead signals emitted from natural objects.
Today we all know of some natural extraterrestrial repeating sources like pulsars. These are fast-spinning neutron stars which emit a rhythmic signal. They were first discovered in 1967 by Northern Irish astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell-Burnell (1943). Until certain of their origin, they were jokingly nicknamed the small Green Men signals.
Tesla wasn’t hearing the signals from pulsars though and was completely unaware of the character of what he had really detected (if indeed he picked up anything at all). Telsa apparently never tried to repeat his observations, claiming that other matters took priority, an astonishingly casual response to so significant a claim.
The Black Knight Decoded?
Source : wikipedia
In the 1920s anomalous signals were again detected by amateur radio operators. These were originally of Earthly origin, but their timing was bizarre! a sign would be received then a second repeated signal received a couple of seconds later. These Long Delayed Echoes (LDEs) were difficult to elucidate in terms or radio waves bouncing off atmospheric layers.
In 1973, Scotsman Duncan Lunan (1945) went back to those signals to ascertain if could add up of them. Miraculously by plotting the delay times against the order during which the echoes were received he could create what seemed to be star charts and diagrams. By deciphering them Lunan decided that the signals were actually messages transmitted by a search originally from the star Epsilon Böotes (Izar) which had been lurking near the Moon for the past 13,000 years.
Lunan isn’t knowledgeable astronomer but instead a science communicator and fantasy author with a flair for outré ideas but nevertheless the name Black Knight isn’t mentioned by him; nor has he personally linked his Epsilon Böotes hypothesis with the Black Knight, others seem to be liable for this.
Alias Corona
Source : Space
A few years later, the Black Knight seemed have made another appearance when American Newspapers reported in 1960 that there was an unusual object in polar orbit, by then both superpowers had satellites in equatorial orbit but polar orbit meant that the satellite could see every a part of the world , yet neither country admitted owning it. this might seem strange but remember that this was a time of deep-rooted suspicion and espionage not just with one another but now seemingly with extra-terrestrials too.
Declassified information now released from that point suggested that object was connected to a Corona satellite under disguise. At the time the US Discoverer research satellite programme was actually a canopy for the Corona project intended to photograph sites within the USSR.
The world was bracing itself for nuclear destruction, coming on the brink of a nuclear war within the Cuban Missile Crisis just two years later, had this information been released at the time perhaps the conflict would have indeed heated .
The mystery object reported was almost certainly a unexpectedly large piece of debris from Discoverer 8 released when it jettisoned its film recovery capsule (known as a “bucket”). Discoverer 8’s bucket was lost because the satellite’s eccentric orbit made it impossible to recover, the satellite itself burned abreast of reentry in March 1960, presumably the debris fell into the atmosphere too around this point .
For any story or conspiracy to possess credibility it always helps to urge someone status on board. within the case of the Black Knight, Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) may be a prime example. Cooper announced seeing many UFOs throughout his career. So when it had been claimed that he saw green lights belonging to the Black Knight on his pioneering Mercury mission into Earth orbit with communication system radar also allegedly learning something inexplicable, it’s often believed to be true. However Cooper produced transcripts saying that on the Mercury flight he never saw anything. once you have admitted seeing UFOs once perhaps other details of when and where often subsided significant.
The STS-88 Encounter
Source : NASA
The most recent and most cited “evidence” for a mystery satellite from beyond dates from 1998. The crew of spacecraft Orbiter Endeavour photographed an unusual object in low Earth orbit (but not a polar orbit). These images are often labelled because the most definite proof of this satellite. However, on more careful analysis this strange structure seems more sort of a piece of space debris.
In actual fact this black object is perhaps a thermal blanket (to be precise, a Trunnion Pin Thermal Cover) that had become dislodged during an EVA. Mission STS-88 was the primary American mission to start construction of the International space platform . The Russians had already placed the Zarya module in orbit so this mission was to attach Zarya to the American Unity module. The crew achieved all objectives of their mission including installing hand-rails and testing a security device to stop astronauts drifting into space should they become detached. However, there have been a couple of hitches along the way. Initial alignment of the modules didn’t quite work so because the Shuttle’s robotic arm loosened its grip to undertake again, several items floated away including the thermal blanket covering, which is that the mysterious-looking image captured within the photo. consistent with the respected space historian James Oberg in his superb history of the incident STS-88 and therefore the Black Knight, the lost blanket burned up when it fell out of orbit a few week after it had been lost.
None of this information supports claims of the Black Knight, the dark satellite, however, there really was a Black Knight Rocket. it had been a British rocket wont to test the planning of a re-entry vehicle for the Blue Streak missile between 1958 and 1965. This one isn’t quite as mysterious.
Is the Black Knight Satellite Real?
In 1954, a couple of news reports claimed the U.S. Air Force had discovered two satellites orbiting the world . With the primary man-made satellite, Sputnik, not launching for an additional three years, the invention was surprising. But the Air Force wasn’t the sole agency to note the satellites. The Venezuelan Communications Ministry also noticed their presence a couple of years later while tracking Sputnik. The ministry noted that these satellites were moving from East to West, in retrograde orbit. apart from the very fact that there have been only a couple of artificial satellites in orbit at the time, none would are in retrograde orbit
In 1954, Donald Keyhoe claimed found a satellite was found to orbiting Earth. Keyhoe was originally a marine naval aviator who later became the foremost prominent name in ufology, establishing the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP. Keyhoe’s claim was picked up by the San Francisco Examiner and St. Louis Post Dispatch. consistent with the articles, Keyhoe said that the Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Talbott, was conscious of the satellites and had even witnessed a ‘silvery, disc-shaped object’ within the sky. Though, Talbott dismissed these claims.
Another confounding characteristic of the Black Knight was the very fact that it had been circling the world in polar orbit, a feat not accomplished by man-made satellites until 1960. this sort of orbit is usually used for mapping, reconnaissance, and tracking, and sometimes it’s wiped out a sun-synchronous orbit in order that whenever the satellite passes a specific spot, it’s an equivalent time of day. the mixture of retrograde and polar orbits makes this sort of satellite stick out especially within the late 50s/early 60s when satellite technology was in its nascent phases. And it wasn’t just military entities who photographed an unidentified satellite, but also the Smithsonian Observatory at Harvard also because the Gruman Aircraft Corporation in NY.
But the story of the Black Knight gets even weirder with the French Space Commission’s observation of the satellite while Jacques Vallée was on staff. Despite excitement and intrigue by Vallée and his colleagues, a senior member of his team deleted their imaging of the satellite, for reasons unknown. While Vallée said he believed it had been out of embarrassment for the commission’s inability to spot the orbiting object, it had been becoming increasingly common for agencies round the world to note the unidentified satellite, without explanation.
NASA’s Black Knight Satellite Explanation
There are several pictures circulating the web of what’s thought to be the Black Knight. These pictures, consistent with NASA, are images of a thermal cover dropped during a spacewalk or during some sort of extra-vehicular activity on the ISS. During this expedition, one astronaut purportedly finished his mission early and was asked to hide the space station’s trunnion pins with thermal covers. The astronaut was asked to finish this as a free-floating task, despite not having the duvet properly attached, inevitably losing track of it because it floated off.
When asked later which pin he lost the duvet to, he said he couldn’t remember which he was too upset with himself to believe it. NASA maintains that the images most of the people point to as evidence of the black knight are images of this thermal cover. there’s also a video of the astronauts inside the space platform filming and photographing the duvet because it floats off.
It is entirely possible that NASA’s claims are true. There are many similarities between the thermal cover and therefore the images believed to be the Black Knight. There aren’t however, sufficient explanations of sightings & documentation of the satellite from the 1950s and 60s by numerous government and scientific agencies.
In 1963, while orbiting Earth, astronaut Gordon Cooper reported seeing a glowing green light before his Mercury 9 module. He reported it to the Australian Space Command, who were ready to track it. curiously enough , when Cooper returned to Earth he wasn’t allowed to speak about the sunshine and it had been officially reported he had suffered hallucinations from an more than CO2 in his cabin.
Despite NASA’s plan to explain what Cooper saw with a more mundane explanation, he continued throughout his life to divulge stories that detailed his experiences with UFOs and other unexplained phenomena. He often spoke of attempted government cover-ups regarding UFOs and unexplained activity, so it might be probable he saw the Black Knight realizing its existence was deliberately being withheld from the general public .
So why does talk about the Black Knight persist?
People continued to use Tesla’s findings to bolster claims for the Black Knight. They also took on board the work of a Norwegian engineer called Jørgen Hals, who found that radio signals he transmitted were being echoed back to him a couple of seconds later. We now know these as long delayed echoes, and Hals was the primary person to watch them.
The fact that we do not have a confirmed explanation of their cause, however, has been seized upon: In 1973, Duncan Lunan wrote a piece of writing in Spaceflight magazine suggesting those studying long delayed echoes had overlooked the likelihood they were sent by an alien guided missile .
Lunan still has faith in an extraterrestrial explanation for the recordings. “The changes within the long distance echo patterns in apparent response to changes within the outgoing signals from Earth really do appear as if the responses of a Bracewell probe, and there’s still no satisfactory natural explanation for the phenomenon,” Lunan said. If the long distance echoes were deliberately produced by a search , there is a problem therein they stopped in 1975.
“If a search was monitoring Earth, instead of trying to draw in attention, perhaps it belatedly discovered from the 1973 to 1974 publicity that it had given away its presence within the 1920s and pulled call at 1975,” Lunan said. “That’s the sole explanation I can see for its apparent departure.”
And yet, for all of that, Lunan said his research has nothing to try to to with the “Black Knight nonsense”. If there’s a link between his theory and therefore the Black Knight, it’s not one that’s being made by him.
Who’s Right?
While the official story is most credible and certain , truth answer will only be revealed once we return and find the satellite, which has never been photographed since 1998.
