This was the case on March 21, 2017, when theĀ Mail OnlineĀ reported: “An alien satellite set up more than 12,000 years ago to spy on humans has been shot down by elite soldiers from the illuminati, UFO hunters claim.”
It’s been more than 120 years, conspiracists believe, since the existence of the Black Knight was first recorded.
Those who subscribe to the theory invoke an extraterrestrial spacecraft in near-polar orbit of Earth, although they draw upon pieces of evidence so disparate that it’s not entirely clear why people link them.
What it all amounts to is a strange brew that has spurred some folks to shout about cover-ups byĀ NASAĀ and other government entities. It’s a legend that refuses to go away.
With that, the conspiracy surrounding the so-called “Black Knight”Ā satelliteĀ appeared to be alive and well.
A lot of the earliest discoveries that have been linked to the Black Knight satellite theory relate to radio signals. But a series of images from 1998 really threw the celestial cat among the pigeons. They were taken during STS-88, the first space shuttle mission to theĀ International Space StationĀ (ISS).
There, for all to see, were images released by NASA that showed a black object hovering above our planet in low Earth orbit.
And it wasn’t long after the images were thrust in front of a hopeful public before people were performing some conspiratorial sums and sharing them with the wider world.
By way of explanation, STS-88 astronaut Jerry Ross pointed out that the ISS was in the midst of being constructed when the images were taken. The U.S. team, he said, was on its way to attach the American module to the one created by the Russians and, as part of that work, they had taken four trunnion pin thermal covers with them.
The task was to wrap these around four bare trunnion pins, these being rods that attached the module to theĀ space shuttle EndeavourĀ while it was being transported. This would act to prevent heat loss from the exposed metal.
“Jerry, one of the thermal covers got away from you,” STS-88 commander Robert Cabana (who now serves as associate administrator of NASA) told Ross during the spacewalk, and it soon became apparent that the cover was lost for good.
Subsequently captured on camera, this runaway black object was given the catalog number 025570 by NASA. A few days later, the item fell from orbit and burned up.
Much of this information has been placed on the record. Former NASA engineer James Oberg, who personally knows Ross and the person who took the photos, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, has demonstrated that these supposed images of the Black Knight actually depict a very mundane object.
