Black Knight Satellite Documentary
Channel: Wrinkled Brain
Date: 2020-04-30

The 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 story 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.
 
The Black Knight Decoded?
In the 1920s anomalous signals were again detected by amateur radio operators. These were originally of Earthly origin, but their timing was bizarre! A signal would be received then a second repeated signal received a few seconds later. These Long Delayed Echoes (LDEs) were difficult to explain in terms or radio waves bouncing off atmospheric layers.  In 1973, Scotsman Duncan Lunan (1945-) went back to these signals to see if could make sense of them.  Miraculously by plotting the delay times against the order in which the echoes were received he could create what appeared to be star charts and diagrams. By deciphering them Lunan decided that the signals were actually messages transmitted by a probe originally from the star Epsilon Böotes (Izar) which had been lurking near the Moon for the past 13 000 years.  Lunan is not a professional astronomer but instead a science communicator and science fiction author with a flair for outré ideas but nevertheless the name Black Knight is never mentioned by him; nor has he personally linked his Epsilon Böotes hypothesis with the Black Knight, others seem to be responsible for this. (UPDATE: Mr Lunan has stated his position on the Black Knight story in the Comments section below.)


Another story dating back to the early 1950s claimed to refer to an apparition of the Black Knight reports the detection of a signal of by an object in orbit. This was a time of deep suspicions held by the two superpowers on either side of the Pacific.  Neither the Americans nor the Soviets had the ability to place an object into any kind of an orbit at that time. Yet the discovery of an Earth-orbiting satellite was reported in a couple of newspapers from the time, and the respected astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (discoverer of Pluto) is said to have been involved. However, the articles actually a couple of synopses of a book by the UFOlogical author Donald Keyhoe (1897-1988). I’m sure these promotional newspaper articles had been great for sales of the book!
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. The origin of the ominous name is part of the enigma; it is impossible to discover who first called it this or indeed why. Humans have only in the last 60 years had the technology to launch a man-made object into space so what is the logical explanation of tales of an alien intruder on our doorstep?