Black Knight satellite
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📖 Term
Contents 3
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| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Black Knight |
The Black Knight satellite is a modern legend that an alien spacecraft, sometimes said to be about 13,000 years old, orbits the Earth and that NASA is hiding it. Researchers have shown that the story stitches together several unrelated events, none of which originally used the name Black Knight.[1][2]
The pieces of the legend
- Radio signals. Supporters link the story to signals Nikola Tesla said he picked up in 1899, and to "long delayed echoes" heard by Norwegian radio amateur Jørgen Hals in 1928. Skeptic Brian Dunning suggests that Tesla may have detected natural sources such as pulsars.[1]
- 1954 satellite reports. In 1954 UFO writer Donald Keyhoe told newspapers that the Air Force had detected two objects orbiting the Earth, at a time when no country could launch a satellite. Skeptics note that he was promoting a book at the time.[1]
- A dark object in 1960. In February 1960 Time reported that the US Navy had tracked a dark object, thought to be a Soviet spy satellite. A follow-up report identified it as part of an American Discoverer satellite.[1]
- Duncan Lunan. In 1973 Scottish writer Duncan Lunan suggested the delayed echoes might come from an alien probe in orbit. He later retracted the idea, calling his own methods unscientific.[1]
- STS-88 photographs. Photographs of a dark object taken during the December 1998 Space Shuttle mission STS-88 are often presented as the satellite. NASA catalogues them as debris, and space writer James Oberg concluded they almost certainly show a thermal blanket lost during a spacewalk.[1][2]
The British Black Knight rocket of 1958–65 shares the name but never put anything into orbit and has no link to the legend.[1]
Assessment
Martina Redpath of the Armagh Planetarium described the story as a mix of unrelated stories, spy satellites and over-interpreted photographs stirred together online into a single myth.[1]
References
- Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "What is the Black Knight satellite?", Space.com · space.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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