What Is The Black Knight Satellite?

By James Donahue

In 1953, four years before the U.S.S.R. kicked off the space race with the launch of Sputnik I, Dr. Lincoln La Paz at the University of New Mexico recorded a blip of something strange circling the Earth.

In May, 1954, various publications carried a statement by retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe that he believed the Earth is being circled by one and possibly more artificial satellites. At about that time Keyhoe published his controversial book Flying Saucers are Real and various magazine articles on this subject.

Once it was known, researchers for the North American Defense System began studying the object. After Sputnik was launched, the object, by then nicknamed The Black Knight" was found to be tracking the USSR satellite.

What was shocking about the Black Knight was that it was found to be generally following a polar orbit around Earth, and had a mass of 15 metric tons, larger than anything any existing rockets were capable of launching into orbit. So what was this thing and where did it come from?

The US Department of Defense appointed astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, the man who had discovered Pluto, to study the mystery object. The results of his report were never made public.

In 1960 the Defense Department reported to the New York Times that "an unidentified silent satellite" was discovered circling the earth in a "near-polar orbit" and that it was tracking U. S. launched satellites. The report said the satellite was about 19 feet long and weighed about 32,000 pounds. One theory was that the object was merely a separated recovery capsule from Discoverer V which had been launched a few months earlier. But it was later determined the Discoverer V recovery capsule plunged to earth a few weeks after the launch.

In an attempt to clarify any confusion as to what satellites were circling the earth, the Defense Department constructed a "radar trip wire" called Dark Fence, which put a form of eyes in the sky all across the width of the United States. Huge 50-dw transmitters located at Gila River, near Phoenix, Arizona and Jordan Lake, Alabama, bounced off signals and recorded the size, speed and route of anything passing in space overhead.

It was Dark Fence that detected passes of that unknown space object on roughly a polar orbit. When the news reached the office of President Eisenhower, the information was marked "Top Secret."

In his book Disneyland of the Gods, author John Keel noted that at about the time when space researchers were discovering the Dark Knight, HAM radio operators were receiving strange coded messages. One man who claimed to have decoded one of the transmissions, said it amounted to a star chart plotted from Earth 13,000 years in the past and focused on the Epsilon Bostes star system.

In September 1960, a tracking camera at Grummand Aircraft Corporation’s factory in Long Island captured the first photograph of the Black Knight.

If Keel is right in his report that a decoded message dated the Black Knight to 13,000 years in antiquity, it suggests that this satellite has been orbiting Earth for a very long time. It would help explain why images of orbiting space craft have appeared in the skies in old paintings, on cave drawings and in rock carvings.

Did the Black Knight come here from the stars? Is it still sending radio transmissions off into space? And if so, who or what is listening from beyond the void? That the satellite appears to have the capability of changing course and following our own space craft suggests that something or someone is controlling its course.

It is said that Nostradamus once wrote that mankind would discover a machine in space that was sent to us by "the watchers."

Who are the watchers? There has been a myth concerning powers that look down on mankind from on high, and possibly even that control the very destiny of the human race. Ancient writings referred to such entities calling them names like Anunnaki, Anakim, and Nephilim. They are allegedly positioned in Eden, a name that means plateau.