For decades, people have been captivated by the mysterious object known as the Black Knight satellite. According to the conspiracy theory, the Black Knight is an extraterrestrial spacecraft that has been in near-polar orbit around Earth for thousands of years. The theory also suggests that NASA has been covering up the existence and origin of the satellite. But is there any truth to these claims, or is it just another elaborate story concocted from various unrelated incidents?
The origin of the Black Knight legend is murky, to say the least. It’s a jumble of completely unrelated stories, according to senior education support officer Martina Redpath of Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland. The legend is a combination of reports of unusual science observations, fringe ideas from authors, and classified spy satellites. All these ingredients have been stirred together and cooked up into a myth that’s inconsistent and rambling.
The first mention of the Black Knight dates back to the 1899 radio experiments of Nikola Tesla, where natural extraterrestrial repeating sources were heard. The legend has also been linked to long-delayed echoes that amateur radio operator Jørgen Hals supposedly heard in Oslo, Norway, in 1928. However, Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast attributes Tesla’s radio signals to pulsars, which weren’t identified until 1968.
In 1954, UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe claimed that the US Air Force had detected two satellites orbiting Earth. At that time, no country had the technology to launch a satellite, and skeptics suggest the news stories were written “tongue-in-cheek.” Furthermore, the British Black Knight rocket, used to test re-entry vehicles from 1958 to 1965, has no connection to the Black Knight satellite legend.
The conspiracy theory gained traction in February 1960, when the US Navy reportedly detected a dark object that they thought was a Soviet spy satellite. A follow-up article revealed that it was actually the remains of an Air Force Discoverer VIII satellite that had gone astray. In 1973, Scottish author Duncan Lunan speculated that long-delayed radio echoes received by Hals and others could originate from a 13,000-year-old alien probe in orbit around the Moon. However, he later retracted his conclusions, admitting that his methods were unscientific.
The Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory gained further momentum in 1998 when images of space debris were photographed during the STS-88 mission. Many believe that the debris is the Black Knight satellite. Still, space journalist James Oberg considers it to be a thermal blanket that was confirmed as lost during a spacewalk.
In conclusion, the Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory has been around for decades, but it lacks concrete evidence. The theory combines unrelated stories to create an elaborate narrative that’s difficult to prove or disprove. While the mystery of the Black Knight continues to capture people’s imaginations, the truth behind the legend may never be fully revealed.