THE BLACK KNIGHT AND OTHER DARK SATELLITES

THE BLACK KNIGHT AND OTHER DARK SATELLITES by Ufonalyzer October, 2009

One nice thing about the 1950s is that there was so little space junk and satellites flying around. When sputnik was launched in 1957, followed 4 months later by USA’s own satellite, the whole world was notified of every satellite launch into the emptiness of space. Nowadays there are so many launches, both public and secret, that no one cares about individual launches anymore. There’s so much stuff up there that two satellites collided a year ago. But back in the fifties, space was a vast, three dimensional empty wilderness—or so we thought.

This writeup is about weird space satellites of our early space era. Some of these satellites appeared to travel around under their own power, so they really amount to UFOs by today’s standards. Most of the source material is from the internet, but the Ufonalyzer has attempted to bring in some other unique source material and ideas into this writeup. The internet and other sources are posted at the end.

In 1960 a mysterious satellite was discovered by radar. Actually it was discovered in 1959 and exposed in 1960. At this time of the space era, the USA had 11 satellites in orbit and the USSR had one. The Russian one weighed 2,925 pounds and the heaviest USA satellite weighed 1,700 pounds. The unknown object was estimated to weigh at least 30,000 pounds [1] and was 10’ by 70’ in two of its dimensions [5]. Another size estimate of it is from a NY Times article which said it was a little smaller than 19’ long and 5’ diameter [6]. This object was written up in newspapers across the country and was nicknamed The Black Knight. Photos were taken of the satellite which appear to be difficult to obtain. Furthermore, The Black Knight was in a polar orbit. Neither the USA nor USSR had achieved any polar orbit launches due to the higher launch velocity required. Some sources claim that the satellite moved from east to west (all satellites then moved from west to east as observed from the earth’s surface because they were launched in that direction to utilize earth’s rotational velocity), but the Ufonalyzer believes that is due to observing the polar orbit from below while the earth rotates west to east. One source, [3], states that the orbit’s inclination to the equator was 135 degrees, so this means that the satellite’s motion had both polar and equatorial components. Regardless of which is correct, the large polar component was not achievable by known earth space technology in 1960. The satellite was unresponsive to any communication, so it was deemed a dark satellite.

Now, what in the world could have put that thing up there? Of course it could have been an alien satellite for surveillance of earth. After all, there are many videos of vertical cylinders just sitting in the air presumably doing surveillance; this occurs often enough so that the UFO community has given the these the name “probes” Other writers speculate that it is an artifact left over from an ancient era when mankind had space travel as written in India’s epic mythological poems, the Mahabarata and Ramayana. The Ufonalyzer wishes to throw out another theory not mentioned in any of the other articles: it is evidence of a secret space program from here on earth. Maybe it was a leftover hulk of a Nazi UFO, or maybe it was a secret space program satellite, Russian or American. Who knows? The UFO disappeared a few weeks later. According to one article [1], a second such satellite was discovered later. Both objects were about the same size and both were in polar orbits.

One of Donald Keyhoe’s books first clued the Ufonalyzer onto this next oddity. In 1954, Keyhoe announced to the world that 2 huge satellites had parked themselves into equatorial orbits around earth. Keyhoe was later to report that his sources told him the satellites had originally been picked up in 1953 while testing new long-range radar. You can hear his actual radio broadcast of this at [2], but you can also read his announcement of it in one of his books. The two satellites were orbiting in low earth orbits 400 miles and 600 miles above the earth. The story finally leaked enough to be broken open by the press, but the government responded by claiming that the satellites were natural and had been captured by earth’s gravitational field. For these two satellites to have been captured by earth’s gravity in equatorial orbits only a few hundred miles from the surface of the earth is a ridiculous and obviously false story. Further cover was provided because the government had already hired Clyde Tombaugh, the noted astronomer who not only had seen and reported a UFO but who was the man who discovered Pluto in 1930. His alleged job was to investigate whether earth had captured small satellites that had been previously undiscovered in the history of mankind. The storyline was that if they existed, these natural satellites could be used as stepping stone platforms into space. The truth was that due to his knowledge and experience with UFOs and astronomy, the alarming discovery by radar in 1953 of those satellites was the reason for his hiring. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, noted meteor expert, who worked for the government investigating various UFO related matters such as the green fireball UFOs in the Southwest, also was hired for the same project. LaPaz always claimed that he never worked on the natural satellite capture program, but many skeptics believe otherwise. Tombaugh always claimed that his study always was about the capture of natural satellites. In 1955, Popular Mechanics wrote a story which supported this claim. It is interesting to note that Popular Mechanics put forward a theory that these objects could be secret USA space satellites; in other words, it attempted to explain away a hypothetical UFO discovery by invoking a hypothetical secret space program. {Digression: Throughout the history of UFO debunking, Popular Mechanics appears to be a staunch propaganda conduit for the US government coverup. They pop up everywhere. Two years or so ago, the Ufonalyzer watched a 2 hour documentary about the Twin Towers collapse of 9/11, and Popular Mechanics had a spokesman on the show completely supporting the government storyline. It was a good, believable documentary, but whether the Ufonalyzer totally believed the documentary is not relevant. The point is that it seemed very odd that this magazine spokesman would be chosen for this role. The Ufonalyzer did not learn until later that Popular Mechanics frequently is trotted out when a debunking is needed.}

All the sources claimed that they were huge but never gave a dimension. However, one source [1] states that these objects were so big they were called “moonlets”. It further states that the 1953 discovery was actually of 10 objects, ranging from 2000 to 5000 feet in diameter. Then in 1954, the two objects described previous were discovered, but the implication were that these two were of the same type and size as the 10 1953 objects. Ufonalyzer recalls reading somewhere that in 1954 the government allegedly started Project Sigma whose purpose was to establish communications contact with UFOs, and it was this satellite incident which prompted the inception of the project. The project directed a beam of binary communications toward the UFO in hopes of getting a response. These large satellite UFOs would have been ideal because they were easy to find in the sky and followed normal orbits, unlike the usual UFOs which appear randomly and move around so quickly. Supposedly this project was successful in making contact with the aliens by 1959. By the way, although these large UFOs (satellites) were parked in orbit, they were said to occasionally move around, sometimes dipping down close to earth as they pursued their agenda.

The 1954 large satellites strangely parallel the premise of Morris Jessup’s 1955 book, “The Case for the UFO”. The main premise for this book is that beings are living in large vehicles above the earth. The book is a collection of fortean occurrences that Jessup believed supported this theory, such as falling ice blocks, raining fish, and appearances of large bodies in the sky. Jessup provides many examples of large objects which throughout history have transited the sun. (Def: transit: the passage of a heavenly body across a given location or through the field of a telescope.) Throughout history many astronomers have observed this sort of thing with great excitement, but when they rushed to gather further detail about these objects with their telescopes, they never could find them again; i.e. they were one time occurrences. Jessup’s theory was that these one time objects were really there and were huge alien ships which were close to earth, and NOT far out in outer space near the sun as the astronomers always assumed. Thus when they trained their telescopes toward where the objects were last seen, they never were there given the fact that the objects were much closer to earth than the astronomers thought so the objects had long since moved on. Jessup was no dumbass, as he almost had a doctorate in astrophysics himself, with the unusual distinction of having done his doctoral dissertation before, not after, his coursework which is not the norm to say the least. He never did complete his courses so he never got his doctorate. Jessup further theorized that the aliens would park their ships between earth and moon at the neutral gravity point, which is about 200k miles out, and not the 400 and 600 mile distances that the actual large satellites were parked.

The content of Jessup’s book, however, was overshadowed by a copy of it that showed up with colored ink strange commentaries in its margins written by 3 people who obviously believed, smugly and perhaps actually, that they had hidden and arcane knowledge about aliens, UFOs, and the ancient pre-history of man. They referred to themselves as gypsies. The story gets weirder. One of these 3 commentators was none other than Carl M. Allen, a.k.a. Carlos Miguel Allende, who provided the story of the Philadelphia Experiment. The comments in the margins so intrigued our government that they hired Varo Corporation, an aerospace military defense firm, to print about 100 copies of the book at government expense, including the colored ink comments in the margins. This book plus the colored annotations is available to be read free on the internet at [4]. Jessup committed suicide in 1959 by routing his car’s exhaust into his car while he was in it, although some conspiracy believers think he was assassinated for either his UFO beliefs or his connection to the Philadelphia Experiment.

Other unknown satellite discoveries are also detailed in some of the references below, particularly [1] and [7]. If they were documented here, it would just be plagiarizing other people’s good work, so please read about them at these references if you wish.

You may ask, then, what is the Ufonalyzer’s opinion of all of this? For sure, the 1953-1954 giant satellites and the 1960 Black Knight events were real, with sufficient public documentation and exposure plus follow on analysis to cut through the spin and lies of the time. The huge satellites parked in low earth orbits were clearly alien ships. Humanity still cannot build a structure of this size in outer space that flies around. The 1960 Black Knight may have been an alien satellite, but final judgment must be deferred in the Ufonalyzer’s opinion. Ufonalyzer still hopes to find a photo of this satellite (many were taken) to try to discern whether it is alien or earthly created. Human created satellites always seem to look like contraptions but with some symmetry about them. But it might be that if aliens built it, it would have a strangeness about it not seen in other satellite photos. This photo could sway the Ufonalyer to one side or the other. It was possible in 1960 to achieve a photo at, say, 400 miles where the shape could be resolved. If such a photo was too fuzzy, perhaps with modern enhancement techniques a pretty good picture of that satellite could now be obtained. But no photo seems to be available, and hope is fading that one will be found. This is starting to seem like one of those situations where once known/public information has been swept up and quarantined for secrecy. Grumman Corp. took a photo of it that is on the web but it is just a dot of light. So for now, the Ufonalyzer is of the opinion that the Black Knight was more likely a secret American or Russian satellite from a probable secret space program. If it was American, this secret space program is likely continuing to this day, although it undoubtedly has transformed as more technology discoveries (read reverse engineered alien technolgy) have been incorporated into the program. This is discussed further in the article, “Does America Have a Secret Space Program?” on Ufonalyzer’s blog.

[1] http://www.ufodigest.com/shadowmag/extra/topsecret.html

[2] http://www.roswellproof.com/Ramey_and_UFOs.html

[3] http://www.nicap.org/mystsatdir.htm

[4] http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/freebooks/ancient/caseforufo.pdf

[5] http://www.alienhub.com/showthread.php?t=791

[6] “A Mystery Polar Satellite, Believed Russian, Spotted” by John W. Finney, New York Times, February 11, 1960.

[7] http://books.google.com/books?id=8xRdn4BfBmwC&pg=RA1-PA775&lpg=RA1-PA775&dq=mystery+satellite+photos+1960&source=bl&ots=khg0EDKjVW&sig=-l9k8r5ObR4vBE7L2sDqhhjtsak&hl=en&ei=JobXSuugN4yuswPh26ygBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=mystery%20satellite%20photos%201960&f=false

©