What Is the Black Knight Satellite and Is NASA Hiding It From Us? While we’re by now
well acquainted with most of the materials and objects on our home planet, Earth,
there’s still so much we don’t know about space. And especially about what’s circling closest to
our world. Most of the random things that exist in Earth’s atmosphere are assumed to be “debris”… but
could there be something more intelligent lurking among all that trash? This is WatchMojo, and today
we’re answering the extraordinary question; What is the Black Knight satellite and is NASA hiding
it from us? Whenever NASA sends rockets or probes up into space, they’re usually equipped with some
sort of camera to capture various parts of our solar system on video. Sometimes, then,
these feeds are made available to the public and it’s not unusual to see unidentified objects
floating around. This is mainly because Earth is covered in a shell of space debris formed
from bits of rock and sometimes equipment that’s found its way into our atmosphere, broken apart,
and now we’re stuck with it in orbit. Because of how fast all this debris is traveling, even the
smallest amount does have the potential to cause a catastrophe. If it makes contact with an operating
ship, for example, or a space station, it could puncture the walls and trigger a disaster. As
such, NASA keeps track of some 27,000 known pieces of debris. It’s a mammoth task for the Agency,
and its only set to get bigger as humanity seeks to expand its presence in space in the future.
Because there’s so much junk floating around up there, though, every so often we stumble across
something - a particular piece of space debris - that causes a stir down here on the ground,
and especially with ufologists and UFO hunters. In this vein, one of the more significant space
photos was taken in 1998 during the STS-88 mission on the International Space Station. At
first glance it’s perhaps just one photo among many, but there’s a growing backstory to this
image… because it’s believed by some to show the infamous Black Knight satellite. The Black Knight
satellite has a seemingly long history, said to date back more than one hundred years, to 1899,
when the esteemed physicist Nikola Tesla was famously staging experiments with radio. During
one of those experiments, he reportedly heard a strange transmission echoing back from space.
Modern scholars tend to now attribute it to a category of object that was unknown at the time,
Pulsars. Or to it being a transmission from Earth, that Tesla wrongly suspected had come from space.
Others, however, believe that what Tesla really experienced was a type of first contact with
intelligent, extraterrestrial beings via a nearby, artificial probe. There’s a general idea, then,
that such a probe exists around Earth (the Black Knight satellite!) and that Tesla accidentally
discovered it all those years ago. Before then, though, it’s suggested that it may have gone
unnoticed for literally thousands of years. With some versions of the legend claiming that the
Black Knight first entered Earth’s atmosphere some thirteen thousand years ago. It's really multiple
strange instances that have led to the formation of the wider Black Knight theory, though. First
Tesla received his unusual signal… but then again, in the late 1920s, the radio engineer
Jorgen Hals also picked up an unusual transmission that also echoed back after a delay. Hals’ signals
were later named Long Delayed Echoes, and they still don’t have a full explanation. Could they
have originated from the same place as Tesla’s, then? And could they really have been beamed
by a watching alien probe? In 1960, some three decades later, the U.S. Navy becomes involved. It
was revealed that the Navy had catalogued a piece of unidentified space debris on radar… but then
it turned out that this wasn’t exactly the full picture. The Navy admission had really been part
of a seeming coverup, to hide the fact that what was actually on radar was an American satellite
meant for spying. Nevertheless, at the time, the story became linked to (and supportive of) a new
resurgence of the Black Knight narrative. One Duncan Lunan, a science fiction author,
even reportedly went so far as to claim that he had decoded messages from above, and that
they revealed the existence of a civilization in Epsilon Boötis, a binary star system in the
Boötes constellation. Lunan later backed off these claims, calling them unscientific, but
some members of the UFO community still refer back to them. Now, after various apparent incidents in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Black Knight is somewhat entrenched in UFO folklore.
With theorists variously claiming that NASA - the world’s leading space agency - knows all about it,
and is communicating with it. Of course, this is not the official line, and NASA has never even
hinted that the Black Knight Satellite is real. The story is the product of conspiracy claims,
only… but those claims do reckon that they have visual evidence. The most popular supposed photo
of the Black Knight satellite comes from the 1998 STS-88 mission to the international space station.
This mission was of high importance because it delivered the first US module to the ISS,
during the early stages of its construction. The crew were assigned a multiple spacewalk missions,
then… and during one of those an astronaut snapped a strange object floating above Earth. Again,
the official line bore no mention of alien tech. The object in the image is, instead, said to be
a piece of thermal covering or blanket that had drifted off by accident during the astronauts’
work. According to NASA, it should’ve also burned up in the atmosphere shortly after the photo was
taken. But, regardless, some ufologists quickly connected this image to the various stories of
the past, to posit that this was the first real sighting of the Black Knight. There have been
further claims since - including as recently as 2020, when satellite footage from the Philippines
showed a curious object floating in the sky, leading some (including the alien enthusiast
Scott C. Waring) to propose that it could be the Black Knight once again. There’s another theory
that takes a different line, however, pitched by those who believe in the Black Knight satellite
but don’t believe it’s still in orbit. And that’s because it was supposedly shot down
in 2017 by none other than that infamous group of powerful world leaders known as the Illuminati.
Supporters of this idea claim that there exists footage of the event, showing an alien escape pod
being triggered from the satellite, in amongst a flash of bright white light. The footage,
which is said to have been unwittingly leaked, also supposedly shows an illuminati warplane,
piloted by elite soldiers, blasting the ancient satellite out of the sky. Despite this, however,
no debris from the apparent crash was ever recovered and no solid evidence of either
the illuminati, or of the alien satellite itself, has ever been confirmed. And so, the legend (and
the situation) is in a bit of a balance. There are plenty of aspects to the Black Knight story
that remain unexplained… but whether they can all be tied together under the idea of there being an
extraterrestrial satellite that’s hiding over our heads, remains to be seen, as well. For those who
believe that the satellite does exist, the NASA live feeds are what we need to be focussing on…
combing through the constant pictures of space in the hope of one day seeing solid proof. NASA
itself, of course, has refuted all Black Knight claims. It continues to say that any and all
objects seen on camera are nothing more than space debris - of which we’re accumulating more
and more. If the satellite was ever revealed to be real, then there would clearly be plenty
of huge questions in need of answers. Namely, how long has it been up there? And why is it watching
us in the first place? Would its discovery by the public trigger the start of alien Armageddon? Or a
new age of space knowledge? For now, though, all we can say is this: the 1998 photograph from the
ISS shows, according to NASA, nothing more than a thermal blanket. A misplaced piece of space
travel equipment, and not a top-secret alien presence. That explanation just doesn’t wash
with some onlookers, however, and perhaps it never will. Rather than a blanket they see evidence of
ET surveillance. Of an advanced group that’s not of this world. Which side do YOU fall in with?