Paranormal Studies 313: The Black Knight Satellite

“Good morning, class!” Professor Grimes said cheerfully. “It’s great to see all of you here this morning. Today we’re going to begin our investigations into the paranormal by–”

“Woah woah woah,” a student shouted. The professor looked around and spotted an unkempt student in the back of the room, who was wildly waving his arms. “Hold on there, professor! Don’t you know that it’s, like, Christmas?”

“Dan, it is most definitely not Christmas,” Professor Grimes replied. “It is December 23rd. Christmas is not for another two days. Besides, what possible difference does that make?”

“Why, it makes all the difference in the world! It’s way too close to Christmas to be learning anything. What are you, some kind of pagan? You gotta respect the holidays! Give us a break.”

Professor Grimes was silent for a moment. He glared at the disheveled student. “Listen here, young man. This is college, not kindergarten. I am here to teach you things and you had better be here to learn them. If you find it impossible to learn then I suggest you drop my class. I am most certainly not going to cancel this lecture simply because a holiday is two days away. That is completely ludicrous.”

“Man, that is so wrong! Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

“You have a great deal of maturing to do,” Grimes said icily. “Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with laziness and self-absorption. In case you did not know, Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin in Bethlehem so that you could goof off in college classes. His divine sacrifice is not honored by your brattish insistence that everything revolves around what you want. It is high time you learned to man up and take responsibility for your life.”

“Whatever,” Dan sighed.

Professor Grimes resisted the urge to pick up the student and toss him through the classroom window. He instead turned to the blackboard and began writing. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, today we are going to begin our investigations into the paranormal by studying a rather unusual type of UFO. Normally when one investigates unidentified flying objects one hears of flying saucers, or strange aircraft, or occasionally alien abductions. This particular UFO, however, is quite different. What we are going to study today is not an unidentified aircraft, but an unidentified satellite.

“I first heard about this rather unusual object while reading the book Dead Men’s Secrets by Jonathan Gray. The satellite is first mentioned in the prologue, which begins on page ix. There we find this intriguing passage.”

The professor turned to his desk and picked up a well-read book. He flipped through a few pages, then cleared his throat and began reading:

It was, I recalled, in October 1957, that man’s most daring triumph – Sputnik I – had been rocketed suddenly into orbit 584 miles above the earth. With excitement, mingled almost with disbelief, millions worldwide had scanned the night sky to glimpse that shining artificial moon skimming on its path east to west against the canopy of stars. Within four months America had followed suit.

So, after aeons of tortoise-paced development, humanity had suddenly leapt off the planet; it was startling – and we were alive to see it!

Then came a bizarre discovery. It was hushed up quickly, I recalled. …

As tracking stations swung into action to monitor these new moons, the night sky had tossed up an awesome mystery. Another satellite was discovered already in orbit. Certainly it was neither American nor Russian – and the uncanny truth was nobody else had the technology.

French astonomer Jacques Valle of the Paris Observatory, saw it three times in 1961 and got eleven data points in forty-five seconds. It seemed to be orbiting in reverse at an altitude of over 22,000 miles above the earth.

Experts were jolted. Who put this satellite into orbit? How long had it been there?

Professor Grimes put down the book. “I had heard many reports of UFO sightings over the years, but none of them were quite like this one. In fact, the account of the black knight satellite is so amazing that I was surprised I’d never heard of it before. Why was this story so obscure? After all, if mankind really had spotted an actual alien satellite then why wasn’t this common knowledge? Why was I forced to discover it in a rather obscure book? It didn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe no one cared,” Dan called out from the back of the room.

“Or maybe people forgot about it,” Lora added.

The professor shook his head. “Both of those possibilities are highly unlikely. After all, in 1961 the space race was just a few years old and there was a keen interest in anything remotely related to outer space. Finding proof of an alien civilization would have been one of the greatest discoveries of all time. People definitely would have cared, and they would not have forgotten about it. There are therefore two likely possibilities. One is that the government quickly covered this up in order to keep the public from finding out. The other is that it never actually happened.”

“So which is it?” Lora asked.

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” Grimes replied. “Before we look for corroborating accounts, let’s analyze the claims in this particular story. That might give us some idea as to the veracity of this report.

“First of all, Sputnik I really was launched in October 1957. The launch occurred on the fourth day of that month. The information regarding its orbit is also more or less correct. The satellite’s actual orbit was an elliptical low Earth orbit, whose height varied from 139 miles to 900 miles high. 584 miles is within that range.”

“Who cares?” Lora asked. “We all know that Sputnik I is real! Why does this even matter?”

“Because it gives us an idea of how accurate the author is with his information. Think of it this way: if he cannot accurately report real, known history, then why should we trust him on facts that we cannot verify?

“To get back to the subject at hand: there is one other claim that we can check. The author stated that Americans launched their own satellite four months after Sputnik I was launched. This is correct. The first American satellite, Explorer I, was launched on January 31, 1958, which was just shy of being exactly four months later. This means that the author’s historical details are correct, which lends credence to his account. With that out of the way, we can finally take a look at his claims regarding this unidentified satellite.”

“Finally,” a voice called out from the back of the room.

Professor Grimes ignored it and continued. “The author claims that the unknown satellite orbited the Earth using a geosynchronous orbit, and that the satellite was first spotted in 1961. According to history, the first satellite to ever achieve that orbit was Syncom 2, which was a communications satellite that NASA launched in 1963. In 1961 the Soviet Union launched the first human into space, but no geosynchronous satellites were launched. It would be several more years before the technology existed to launch a satellite into that particular orbit.”

“Couldn’t it just be an early Soviet experiment?” another student asked.

“Possible, but unlikely,” Professor Grimes replied. “In 1961 the Soviet Union was devoting enormous resources to try to embarrass the United States. They went out of their way to prove that their space program was superior – not because they cared about space, but because they desperately wanted to prove that communism was superior to capitalism. Had they achieved a geosynchronous orbit before America did you can be sure that they would have bragged about it and used that success to smear the West. It is highly unlikely that they would have kept it a secret. That would have defeated the entire point.”

“So, what – are you saying it really was an alien satellite?” Lora asked.

Professor Grimes shook his head. “We have not yet arrived at that conclusion. You must not jump ahead of what we have established. So far all we know is that the author’s retelling of history is correct, and if a geosynchronous satellite really was detected in 1961 then it almost certainly was not built by the Russians or the Americans.”

“So it would have to be alien, then,” Lora insisted.

“Not necessarily! A geosynchronous orbit – provided it is of the geostationary type – could be stable for centuries or even millennia. If the black knight satellite existed it could have been an alien satellite, or it could have been launched by an ancient, lost civilization.”

The entire class burst our laughing. Dan spoke up. “Are you trying to tell me that cave men launched the satellite? Seriously?”

“Ancient man was a great deal more advanced than you realize,” Professor Grimes replied calmly. “In fact, that will be the subject of a future lecture. For now it is enough to say that there are two possibilities. If the satellite really did exist and if it was not built by modern man, then it either came from aliens or from ancient man. Those are the only two logical alternatives. Our next task is to find out if this satellite really did exist.

“This is where matters become difficult. If this were a science experiment then we could simply perform the experiment ourselves and see what happens. History, however, is quite different. Real science is testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. History, however, is none of these things. Since we cannot go back in time and look into this ourselves, all we can do is look for corroborating accounts.”

A voice called out from the back of the room. “Is class over yet?”

The professor ignored him. “Interestingly, I was able to find several accounts of the black knight satellite – but none of them corroborated with Jonathan Gray’s account. Plus, every single mention of Jacques Valle in association with this satellite can be traced back to Jonathan Gray’s book. It would appear that Jacques did not observe this mysterious object in 1961. The reality is that he did claim to see a UFO, but the date was May 1955 and the UFO was hovering over his house. It was not in orbit and it was not a satellite. What actually happened to him in 1961 was quite different from Jonathan Gray’s report. The reality is that, while working on the French Space Committee, Jacques reported seeing people destroy tracking tapes that had recorded an unknown object in earth orbit. However, the object tracked on the tapes was in a retrograde orbit, not a geosynchronous orbit, and Jacques assumed it was a captured asteroid. The incident sparked his lifelong interest in UFOs, but he did not claim that the object on the destroyed tapes was an alien satellite.”

Lora spoke up. “Well, but the accounts are kinda similar, aren’t they?”

“In a way, but there is an important difference. It would appear that an unknown object was tracked in 1961, but that object was assumed to be an asteroid, not a man-made satellite. That is a key difference! Since the evidence was erased there is no way to analyze it further. It must be pointed out that a passing asteroid is a much more reasonable explanation than an alien satellite.”

“Well that’s depressing,” Dan called out.

“But that is not the end of the story. You see, there are other accounts of the black knight satellite that are completely different. For example, on March 7, 1960 Time Magazine announced the discovery of a ‘dark’ satellite in orbit. This unknown object caused a great deal of worry and consternation until they realized that it was simply part of a derelict Air Force Discoverer satellite. This shows how easy it was to lose track of things back then.

“Another account I came across was record by Jon Keel in Disneyland of the Gods. Keel said that in February 1960 the United States detected an unknown object in polar orbit. This object could not have been a passing asteroid because it was actually transmitting data – specifically, a star chart from 13,000 years ago. The satellite was tracked for seven months, and on September 3, 1960 a tracking camera took a photograph of it. It was said to be a glowing red object that moved from east to west.”

“Wow,” Lora said. “That’s amazing!”

“It is indeed. However, like the Jonathan Gray story, I can find no corroborating accounts, and the supposed photograph cannot be found anywhere. There are a few other reports that add additional details to the story – such as the object weighing 15 tons, and the photograph being taken at 8:51 PM – but they all appear to come from the Jon Keel book.”

“So what does that mean?” Lora asked.

“It means that we have two conflicting accounts, each of which tell a very different story, and neither of which can be corroborated. That in itself is highly suspicious. As conspiracy theories go, this one is remarkably poor. It makes astounding claims but there is no solid evidence to support it. Unless additional information turns up I can only conclude that the story of the black knight satellite is a myth.”

“Seriously?” Dan said. “Do you mean I sat through this whole class just to find out that the satellite never existed? You could have just told us that at the beginning!”

Professor Grimes nodded. “Yes, I could have. It is true that you learned that an obscure, all-but-unknown paranormal story was most likely false. I am glad you were paying attention – but you must keep in mind that that is not all you learned today. You were also given a demonstration of techniques that can be used to analyze other paranormal stories, to see if there is any truth to them – and we will be applying those same techniques all semester. Some of the stories we will investigate will turn out to be true, and others will be false. Regardless, we will discover the truth through the use of logic and actual investigation. We will not simply assume whatever we want to believe and then go on from there. In this class the truth actually matters.

“It is vitally important to get to the truth of a matter, and not simply accept whatever you read or were told. In order to do this you must have a mechanism for determining the truth. Without that you will have no way of knowing whether your beliefs correspond to reality.”

“So what?” Dan asked. “Who cares?”

“I assure you, young man, that you will care. At the end of the day reality always wins. You can attempt to put it off, but the longer you ignore the real world the harder it will bite you in the end. You will be much better off if you make peace with reality while you are still young.”

Professor Grimes glanced up at the clock. “That will be all for today, students. I wish you all a Merry Christmas. Don’t forget to read up on chapter 2 for our next class. You are dismissed!”