The Black Knight Satellite

This is a weird story about an unusual Black Knight. There are around 3000 human-made satellites around the Earth. Since the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into orbit in 1957, various countries around the world did the same and today satellites are used mostly for communication, navigation and exploration. Satellites are often visible passing overhead as the sunlight reflects back towards the Earth. However, these satellites are relatively unexciting in comparison to the mistery surrounding one very old dark satellite...

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?

The first apparent part of this story begins with signals heard by Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) a brilliant Serbian inventor (and described by many thanks to his often eccentric behaviour and opinions as a genuine mad scientist) who spent most of his career in the USA. He was an electrical engineer and produced works which explored the idea of radio and wireless transmissions. In 1899, he reportedly intercepted a signal unlike any of the natural sources from Earth such as electrical storms that he had already investigated in his experiments. Instead he announced that regular signals must be coming from an intelligent outside source, potentially inhabitants of Mars. Today there are those who say he was listening to a transmission from an orbiting satellite of unknown origin later called by some the Black Knight.

Source: Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog