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 Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question;
What is the Black Knight satellite and is NASA hiding it from us?
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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?
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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