Astronomers across the world make a game of spotting secret government spy satellites, tracking them, and sometimes sharing the information with plausible deniability. Not everything in Earth orbit has a prosaic explanation like this object.
First publicized in Disneyland Of The Gods, John Keel wrote of an object observed in polar orbit. Its size was beyond the known means of any terrestrial space program and once in the public consciousness more observations were recorded. Some ham radio operators, precursors to today’s basement-dwelling neckbeards, claimed eavesdropping on strange signals from the satellite dubbed “The Black Knight”. From the ground it was a glowing, red object moving in an east-to-west orbit contrary to contemporary satellites. Life gets more interesting as humans take their first steps into space.
First known observation of TBK from orbit was by Gordon Cooper bringing forth explanations that Gordo was tripping balls from a build-up of carbon dioxide, but the sightings didn’t stop there. One of the more famous photos floating around the internet is from STS-088, spied from Endeavor back in 1987 long before Photoshop was a twinkle in a pervert’s eye.
One of the hottest videos to hit the internet from the International Space Station isn’t Chris Hadfield’s cover of “Space Oddity” but a sighting of The Black Knight. It bears a striking similarity to the STS-088 images (1 2 3 4 5 6).
Many questions remain on the anomaly. Why would it be seen going in an east-to-west, or vice versa, if The Black Knight is in a polar orbit? I might have more to say after acquiring my celestial dynamics degree. What says the video isn’t just capturing the reflection of a light source within the ISS? One thing stands to reason, when confronted with the evidence from observing TBK the skeptics can only cry “woo” with ad hominem attacks against fortean websites instead of calling it an astronaut’s wayward toolbag, a satellite viewed from a non-traditional angle, or at least claim the tried-and-true fallbacks of mass hysteria or hallucinations. Even the ones who say it is space junk claim to be “comfortable” with the explanation without further inquiry.
Me? I have no idea, and I look forward to following this story until there’s something more substantial than speculation from either side.