BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE is claimed by some conspiracy theorists to be an object approximately 13,000 years old of extraterrestrial origin orbiting Earth in near-polar orbit. Critics and mainstream academics have called it a conspiracy theory and myth that combines several unrelated stories. A 1998 NASA photo believed by some to show the Black Knight satellite is thought by experts to be of a thermal blanket lost during an EVA mission.
Black Knight is a jumble of completely unrelated stories; reports of unusual science observations, authors promoting fringe ideas, classified spy satellites and people over-interpreting photos. These ingredients have been chopped up, stirred together and stewed on the internet to one rambling and inconsistent dollop of myth. For any storey or conspiracy to have credibility it always helps to get someone high profile on board. In the case of the Black Knight, Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) is a prime example. Cooper announced seeing many UFOs throughout his career.
So when it was claimed that he saw green lights belonging to the Black Knight on his pioneering Mercury mission into Earth orbit with ground control radar also allegedly picking up something inexplicable, it is often believed to be true. However, Cooper produced transcripts saying that on the Mercury flight he never saw anything. When you have admitted seeing UFOs once perhaps other details of when and where often become less significant. Legend has it that in orbit around the Earth is a mysterious, dark object which dates back perhaps 13 000 years.
Its origin and purpose are inscrutable, dubbed the “Black Knight” this elusive satellite has allegedly been beaming signals towards the Earth and inspected by NASA astronauts yet only a few on Earth officially know of its existence. Yet despite the most conclusive evidence in favour of the Black Knight’s existence being categorically debunked by NASA folk, the renegade thermal blanket will forever live on in the Agency’s archive of ISS-related space debris as Item 25570, and perhaps more glamorously as the infamous Black Knight Satellite in the internet’s infinite Imaginarium.
