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00:00Right now, there's somewhere in the region of 35,000 pieces of space debris that's bigger than four inches circling Earth.
00:08It's all hurtling around at about 17,500 miles per hour.
00:14But amongst the definite trash, there's one item of legendary status, the Black Knight satellite.
00:21So, was it put there by humans or aliens?
00:25You decide.
00:29Whenever NASA sends rockets or probes up into space, they're usually equipped with some sort of camera to capture various parts of our solar system on video.
00:37Sometimes, then, these feeds are made available to the public and it's not unusual to see unidentified objects floating around.
00:44This is mainly because Earth is covered in a shell of space debris formed from bits of rock and sometimes equipment that's found its way into our atmosphere, broken apart, and now we're stuck with it in orbit.
00:56Because of how fast all of this debris is travelling, even the smallest amount does have the potential to cause a catastrophe.
01:02If it makes contact with an operating ship, for example, or a space station, it could puncture the walls and trigger a disaster.
01:09As such, NASA keeps track of some 27,000 known pieces of debris.
01:14It's a mammoth task for the agency, and it's only set to get bigger as humanity seeks to expand its presence in space in the future.
01:21Because there's so much junk floating around up there, though, every so often we stumble across something, a particular piece of space debris, that causes a stir down here on the ground.
01:31And especially with ufologists and UFO hunters.
01:34In this vein, one of the more significant space photos was taken in 1998 during the STS-88 mission on the International Space Station.
01:43At first glance, it's perhaps just one photo among many… but there's a growing backstory to this image, because it's believed by some to show the infamous Black Knight satellite.
01:54The Black Knight satellite has a seemingly long history, said to date back more than 100 years to 1899, when the esteemed physicist Nikola Tesla was famously staging experiments with radio.
02:06During one of those experiments, he reportedly heard a strange transmission echoing back from space.
02:12Modern scholars tend to now attribute it to a category of object that was unknown at the time, pulsars, or to it being a transmission from Earth that Tesla wrongly suspected was coming from space.
02:23Others, however, believe that what Tesla really experienced was a type of first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings via a nearby artificial probe.
02:33There's a general idea, then, that such a probe exists around Earth – the Black Knight satellite – and that Tesla accidentally discovered it all those years ago.
02:42Before then, though, it's suggested that it may have gone unnoticed for literally thousands of years, with some versions of the legend claiming that the Black Knight first entered Earth's atmosphere some 13,000 years ago.
02:54It's really multiple strange instances that have led to the formation of the wider Black Knight theory, though.
03:00First, Tesla received his unusual signal. Then again, in the late 1920s, the radio engineer Jörgen Hulse also picked up an unusual transmission that also echoed back after a delay.
03:12Hulse's signal was later named Long Delayed Echoes, and they still don't have a full explanation.
03:17Could they have originated from the same place as Tesla's, then? And could they really have been beamed by a watching alien probe?
03:23In 1960, some three decades later, the US Navy becomes involved. It was revealed that the Navy had catalogued a piece of unidentified space debris on radar.
03:33But then it turned out that this wasn't exactly the full picture. The Navy admission had really been part of a seeming cover-up to hide the fact that what was actually on radar was an American satellite meant for spying.
03:44Nevertheless, at the time, the story became linked to, and supportive of, a new resurgence of the Black Knight narrative.
03:51One Duncan Lunan, a science fiction author, even reportedly went so far as to claim that he had decoded messages from above and that they revealed the existence of a civilization in Epsilon Boötis, a binary star system in the Boötis constellation.
04:07Lunan later backed off of these claims, calling them unscientific. But some members of the UFO community still refer back to them.
04:16Now, after various apparent incidents in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Black Knight is somewhat entrenched in UFO folklore, with theorists variously claiming that NASA, the world's leading space agency, knows all about it and is communicating with it.
04:31Of course, this is not the official line, and NASA has never even hinted that the Black Knight satellite is real. The story is the product of conspiracy claims only.
04:40But those claims do reckon that they have visual evidence.
04:44The most popular supposed photo of the Black Knight satellite comes from the 1998 STS-88 mission to the International Space Station.
04:53This mission was of high importance because it delivered the first US module to the ISS, during the early stages of its construction.
05:01The crew were assigned multiple spacewalk missions then, and during one of those, an astronaut snapped a strange object floating above Earth.
05:09Again, the official line bore no mention of alien tech. The object in the image is instead said to be a piece of thermal covering or blanket that had drifted off by accident during the astronaut's work.
05:20According to NASA, it should have also burned up in the atmosphere shortly after the photo was taken.
05:25But, regardless, some ufologists quickly connected this image to the various stories of the past, to posit that this was the first real sighting of the Black Knight.
05:35There have been further claims since, including as recently as 2020, when satellite footage from the Philippines showed a curious object floating in the sky,
05:44leading some, including the alien enthusiast Scott C. Waring, to propose that it could be the Black Knight once again.
05:51There's another theory that takes a different line, however, pitched by those who believe in the Black Knight satellite but don't believe it's still in orbit.
05:59And that's because it was supposedly shot down in 2017 by none other than the infamous group of powerful world leaders known as the Illuminati.
06:07Supporters of this idea claim that there exists footage of the event, showing an alien escape pod being triggered from the satellite in amongst a flash of bright white light.
06:17The footage, which is said to have been unwittingly leaked, also supposedly shows an Illuminati warplane piloted by elite soldiers blasting the ancient satellite out of the sky.
06:28Despite this, however, no debris from the apparent crash was ever recovered, and no solid evidence of either the Illuminati or the alien satellite itself has ever been confirmed.
06:38And so, the legend, and the situation, is in a bit of a balance. There are plenty of aspects to the Black Knight story that remain unexplained,
06:46but whether they can all be tied together under the idea of there being an extraterrestrial satellite that's hiding over our heads remains to be seen as well.
06:55For those who believe that the satellite does exist, the NASA live feeds are where we need to be focusing on, combing through the constant pictures of space in the hope of one day seeing solid proof.
07:06NASA itself, of course, has refuted all Black Knight claims. It continues to say that any and all objects seen on camera are nothing more than space debris, of which we're accumulating more and more.
07:17If the satellite was ever revealed to be real, then there would clearly be plenty of huge questions in need of answers. Namely, how long has it been up there? And why is it watching us in the first place?
07:28Would its discovery by the public trigger the start of an alien Armageddon? Or a new age of space knowledge? For now, though, all we can say is this.
07:37The 1998 photograph from the ISS shows, according to NASA, nothing more than a thermal blanket. A misplaced piece of space travel equipment. And not a top secret alien presence.
07:49That explanation just doesn't wash with some onlookers, however, and perhaps it never will. Rather than a blanket, they see evidence of ET surveillance. Of an advanced group that's not of this world.
08:01Which side do you fall in with? What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.