Black Knight satellite

[[Image:Black Knight Satellite (cropped).jpg|thumb|165px|right|The dark knight rises yet again.]]{{ufology}}The '''Black Knight satellite''' is a piece of space debris confused for an extraterrestrial [[UFO]] with claims attached to it being a [[Ancient aliens|13,000 years old satellite]] which was known to [[Nikola Tesla]] and is currently being covered up by [[NASA]],<ref group=note>Yet they still host pictures of it [https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=STS088&roll=724&frame=66 here].</ref> and a whole bunch more. Presumably other countries' space programs too, or do they somehow not know about it? Outside of [[ufology]], this [[conspiracy theory]] has gained some attention within [[QAnon]].

== Space debris ==
It turns out that this supposed satellite was most likely space debris from the {{wpl|STS-88}} Space Shuttle mission in 1989, specifically a thermal blanket that was lost during the mission when two of the astronauts went outside of the vehicle.<ref>Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, [https://armaghplanet.com/the-truth-about-the-black-knight-satellite-mystery.html The Truth About the Black Knight Satellite Mystery]. armaghplanet.com, 18 July 2013.</ref><ref>[http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts88_and-black-knight.pdf Phantom satellite? What IS it? What ISN’T it? WHY the confusion?] jamesoberg.com, 21 October 2014.</ref> As the blanket tumbled towards the [[Earth]], it eventually got the shape that the picture in its specific angle shows, aided by the fact that it was irregularly shaped and already crumpled.

So it's really less a dark knight, and more like his horse blanket.

== Conspiracy ==
The conspiracy theory surrounding this blanket is an absolute indiscernible mess of a bunch of different unrelated stories.

Like any good conspiracy theory, it involved [[Nikola Tesla]]. In particular, the sounds he heard during his 1899 experiments with [[radio]] signals. He heard strange pulsating waves. While unknown to him, he was probably tuning in to [[pulsar|pulsars]].<ref name=skeptoid />

It also includes the [[anecdote]] of astronaut Gordon Cooper who claimed he saw a UFO during his 1963 15<sup>th</sup> orbit in Mercury 9. There is no evidence that this happened. NASA's mission transcripts and Cooper's personal copies don't show any such report being made during the orbit.<ref name=skeptoid /> [[Appeal to authority|But since an astronaut said it, it must be true!]]

The age-estimate conspiracy theorists often cite {{wpl|Duncan Lunan}} via the popular method of [[PIDOOMA]] (Lunan actually said it was 12,600 years old), also using the method to conclude that the satellite had come from the {{wpl|Epsilon Boötis}} system. He would later admit that it was made in "outright error":

{{quotebox|When Duncan Lunan did his translation of the LDE data in 1973 and came up with the star map, he never had any thought of Black Knight or any other strange polar satellite. In fact his interpretation was that the LDEs were coming from the Earth's L<small>5</small> Lagrangian point. L<small>4</small> and L<small>5</small> are two points along the [[Moon]]'s orbit, one 60° ahead of it and the other 60° behind, which are stable and where [[Gravity|gravimetric]] effects from the Earth and Moon will hold an object in steady orbit. Moreover, Lunan later acknowledged that his method was not only unscientific but that he'd made outright errors, and retracted it. So despite today's pop-culture story, there never has been any reasonable interpretation of anything connecting Epsilon Boötis to either a mysterious satellite or to a date of 12,600 years ago.<ref name=skeptoid>[https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4365 The Black Knight Satellite]. Skeptoid Podcast 365, 4 June 2013.</ref>}}

==Notes==
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== References ==
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[[Category:Ancient aliens]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Out-of-place artifact]]
[[Category:Ufology]]

Categories: Ancient aliens, Conspiracy theories, Out-of-place artifact, Ufology