Black Knight satellite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photo of the alleged Black Knight satellite during mission STS-88.

For the British rocket program, see Black Knight (rocket).

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. Some
critics and mainstream academics have called it a conspiracy theory and "one rambling and
inconsistent dollop of myth".[1][2]

Stories and myths[edit]

The story has its origins in 1954 when newspapers including the St. Louis Post Dispatch and
the San Francisco Examiner ran stories attributed to retired naval aviation major
and UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe saying that the US Air Force had reported that two satellites
orbiting Earth had been detected. At this time no one had the technology to launch a satellite. [3]
In February 1960 there was a further claim by TIME that the US Navy had detected a dark object
thought to be aSoviet spy satellite in an orbit inclined at 79 from the equator with an orbital
period of 104.5 minutes. Its orbit was also highly eccentric with an apogee of 1,728 km (1,074 mi)
and a perigee of only 216 km (134 mi). At the time the Navy was tracking a fragment of casing
from the Discoverer VIII satellite launch which has the same orbit, and it is believed to be a
derelict US satellite that had gone astray.[3][4]
An object photographed in 1998 during the STS-88 mission has been widely claimed to be this
"alien artifact". According to Martina Redpath of Armagh Planetarium and James Oberg,[5] it is
more probable that the photographs are of a thermal blanket that was confirmed as lost during
an EVA.[1] Redpath wrote:
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 chopped up, stirred together and stewed on the internet to one rambling
and inconsistent dollop of myth.[1]

References[edit]
1.

^ Jump up to:a b c Redpath, Martina. "The Truth About the Black

Knight Satellite Mystery". Armagh Planetarium. Retrieved 10
March2014.

2.

Jump up^ Flockstra, Hilbert. "ASH Online Conspiracy Theories

101: The Black Knight Satellite". EPU - American Studies
Program. University of Groningen. Retrieved 21 May 2015.

3.

^ Jump up to:a b Dunning, B. (4 June 2013). "The Black Knight

Satellite". Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media Inc. Retrieved10
March 2014.

4.

Jump up^ Editors (7 March 1960). "Science: Space Watch's First

Catch". TIME Magazine. Retrieved 9 April 2014.

5.

Jump up^ Oberg, James. "STS-88 and the Black Knight" (PDF).
Retrieved 27 July 2015.

Categories:

Alleged UFO-related entities

Satellites

Navigation menu

Create account

Not logged in

Talk

Contributions

Log in

Read
Edit
View history
Go

Main page

Contents

Featured content

Current events

Random article

Donate to Wikipedia

Wikipedia store
Interaction

Help

About Wikipedia

Community portal

Recent changes

Contact page
Tools

What links here

Related changes

Upload file

Special pages

Permanent link

Page information

Wikidata item

Cite this page

Print/export

Create a book

Article
Talk


Download as PDF

Printable version
Languages

Catal

Deutsch

Franais

Hrvatski

Italiano

Magyar

Romn

/ srpski

Ting Vit
Edit links

This page was last modified on 5 November 2015, at 13:31.