The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 503: DEEP DIVE: The Black Knight Satellite | Ancient Craft Watching us From Orbit

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1. It was the first satellite in Earth's orbit. Or was it? For over a hundred years, an object has been seen, heard and photographed by people all around the world. This object became known as the Black Knight Satellite. The signals coming from the Black Knight Satellite have been decoded. And if the translation is correct, it's been watching us for 13,000 years. Let's find out why.

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as the Black Knight Satellite. The signals coming from the Black Knight Satellite have been decoded, and if the translation is correct, it's been watching us for 13, in the area of modern-day Croatia. He spent his teens and twenties teaching himself engineering and physics, then moved to the United States. In New York, he worked for Thomas Edison, but the two had a falling out, which led Nikola Tesla to go out on his own. He found investors and began focusing on his own projects and research. And it worked better than he ever could have imagined.

Tesla was already a well-known inventor and public speaker when he set up a lab in Colorado Springs. He chose Colorado because it had less regulation than New York City. He called his lab the Tesla Experimental Station. There he built a large tower to study atmospheric electricity and wireless power. But one evening in 1899, Tesla got a surprise. His tower started receiving a transmission, a transmission that Tesla believed to be artificial. He wrote about the experience at length in an article for Collier's Weekly in 1901. The changes I noted were taking place periodically, and with

such a clear suggestion of number and order that they were not traceable to any cause then known to me. I was familiar, of course, with such electrical disturbances as are produced by the sun, aurora borealis, and earth currents, and I was as sure as I could be of any fact that these variations were due to none of these causes. It was sometime afterward when the thought flashed upon my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to intelligent control. The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. His antenna was receiving numbers at a regular interval. At first, Tesla thought it was a signal coming from high in the atmosphere. It turned out that the signal was coming from higher than that. It was coming from space. Tesla believed that this was evidence of life on another planet.

He's quoted in a local newspaper as saying, I believe numbers are being used for communication because numbers are universal. He also alluded to this transmission in a letter to the Red Cross the following Christmas. I have observed electrical actions which have appeared inexplicable, faint and uncertain though they were, they have given me a deep conviction and foreknowledge that all human beings as one will turn their eyes to the firmament above with feelings of love and reverence thrilled by the glad news. Brethren, we have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads, one, two, three.

The scientific community certainly acknowledged Tesla's genius, but they also thought of him as a bit of a mad scientist. The news of Tesla's transmission from another world was not taken seriously. Then, a few years later, Guillermo Marconi, the famous Italian inventor of wireless radio that was stolen from Tesla, he also intercepted mysterious signals. He gave this statement in 1920. that these signals may have been sent by the inhabitants of other planets to the inhabitants of Earth. The messages have been distinct, but unintelligible. They have been received simultaneously in London and in New York with identical intensity, indicating that they must have originated at a great distance.

The most familiar signal received is curiously musical. It comes in the form of three short raps, which may be interpreted as the Morse letter S. But there are other sounds which may stand for other letters. So within a 20-year time span, two scientists are publicly stating they receive transmissions they can't explain. One of these scientists was supremely famous and accomplished, and the other invented wave-based wireless communications. That's certainly worth paying attention to. In 1927, Jorgen Halls,

a Norwegian radio engineer, wrote a letter to the editor of the journal Nature. In it, he described the mysterious echoes of his own transmissions. At the same time as I heard the telegraph signals, I also heard echoes. From where this echo comes, I cannot say for the present. I will only herewith confirm that I really heard this echo. Radio echoes themselves are not unusual. Radio waves, especially shortwave, can bounce between the ground and stratosphere several times. This is called propagation. But typical radio echoes usually occur one-seventh of a second after the original transmission, consistently. The echoes Jorgen Halls described were happening at different intervals, up to 15 seconds after the transmission, consistently. The echoes Jorgen Halls described were happening at different intervals,

up to 15 seconds after the transmission, and weren't consistent with signals that bounce around the Earth. These signals are now known as Long Delayed Echoes, or LDE's. For years after their discovery, shortwave and ham radio operators have observed LDE's.

But how and why they occur remains a mystery. Or does it? Renowned Australian physicist Ronald Bracewell suggested this might be the exact way an extraterrestrial society might first attempt to contact us. Sending our signals back to us would ensure we would understand them and that someone would be monitoring the frequency. And it would communicate that someone out there could hear us. This method of communication could also be easily automated by a machine. On May 14, 1954, two American newspapers reported a story that might explain the echoes.

This story got scientists very excited. It also caused the Pentagon to panic. It involved a machine, specifically a satellite. On May 14th, 1954, three years before Sputnik became the first satellite in orbit, a strange news story appeared. The report claimed that, according to an expert, one or two satellites are circling the Earth. The expert in question was Marine Corps Major Donald Kehoe. Major Kehoe attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served until 1922 when he was injured in a plane crash. He returned to active duty during World War II, serving as a trainer, then retired at the rank of major.

Kehoe claimed U.S. government scientists in White Sands, New Mexico, had found one or two artificial satellites and were trying to track them. A few weeks later, we got a few more details. It was reported that two satellites had been found at 400 miles and 600 miles above the Earth. These satellites were emitting a strange radio signal at periodic intervals, much like Tesla and Marconi discovered years earlier. The Pentagon was upset that this information leaked, but when you receive broadcasts from a satellite before satellites were invented, it's hard to keep that a secret.

Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, an astronomer out of the University of New Mexico, was allegedly in charge of the team trying to locate and ID the objects, though he denied this fact vehemently. A few weeks later, NASA detected signals from what it called an unknown orbiting object, and those signals were confirmed by astronomers in France and elsewhere. The American military was concerned that these were Russian spy satellites launched in secret. They weren't. Sputnik 1 wasn't launched for another three years. In 1957, a researcher for the Venezuelan government was observing Sputnik 2 as it passed over Caracas.

He noticed a mysterious object. At first, he thought it was Sputnik, but it couldn't be. Sputnik moves in pro-grade orbit, meaning from west to east, along with the rotation of the Earth. This object was in retrograde orbit, moving east to west, opposite the rotation of the Earth. But here's the thing. This technology didn't exist.

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wherever you go, you can get it from Tread Experts. Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth,

while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. Throughout the late 1950s, there were more observations of what was called a dark satellite. By 1960, the Defense Department finally acknowledged it. And on February 11, 1960, the story ran in The New York Times. Washington, February 10. An unidentified silent satellite has been discovered circling the Earth

in a near-polar orbit by United States tracking stations, the Defense Department said today. The identity and origin of the mystery satellite, which has been dubbed the Dark Satellite, are not known despite nearly two weeks of tracking. This report renewed interest in the satellite, and astronomers around the world reported seeing it. And what was strange about it was it didn't have a regular schedule. It appears some nights, but not others.

They didn't know when to watch for it. The article stated the satellite was detected by the U.S. Navy Space Surveillance System, or SPACER. SPACER had been tracking it for two weeks. SPACER was the precursor to NORAD. It was designed to detect objects as small as a basketball orbiting above the United States. People called it the Space Fence. This was the height of the Cold War, and the Pentagon was absolutely terrified this was some kind of new Russian spy satellite that could appear and disappear at any time.

That year, Time magazine even wrote about the Black Knight satellite and how the Navy was trying to track it. In 1961, Brumman Aircraft, a military contractor, was tasked with tracking and photographing a retrograde satellite. And there's a very detailed proposal for this operation available online. It specifically mentions the three Air Force representatives who hired Grumman, along with the exact steps and timeline for the four-and-a-half-month-long project. It also includes a detailed list of sightings in the New York area in 1960,

even a photograph taken at their outpost in Bethpage, New York. That very same outpost produced the Lunar Module Eagle that made the first moon landing eight years earlier. In fact, it was likely the very same team. Grumman was awarded the contract to build the Lunar Module Eagle the very next year, in 1962. We have no reason to believe the satellite tracking project didn't occur,

but that report and those photographs have never been released. In May 1961, another very reliable institution spotted the object, the Smithsonian Observatory at Harvard. They even reported this in the press. The satellite was first spotted over Florida, an unsuspected,

unpredicted bright satellite. Stations around the world have been asked to help track it. And this is exactly what happened. From his Paris lab, Jacques Vallée observed, tracked, and even filmed the Black Knight satellite. He described it as a dark cigar-shaped object. The first thing that stood out was it was in polar orbit. There were no Earth-based satellites in polar orbit yet.

What's interesting about this is satellites in polar orbit are very well positioned to observe all points of the Earth's surface. When a country wants to see everything, they choose polar orbit. For example, modern weather satellites move in polar orbit. Same with Sentinel-1 launched by the European Space Agency. Sentinel-1 studies changes to Earth's ice caps. Another fact about the object stood out. It was huge.

About the size of an oil truck, and weighed about 15 tons. There was no rocket on Earth that had the ability to launch something this size. Vallée and his team were thrilled at the discovery. He compiled all the research, the photos, the film, put it all into a large file, and delivered it to his supervisor. The materials were immediately confiscated, the photos destroyed, and the film erased. The official reason for destroying the film was that the observatory was embarrassed that it couldn't identify the object. According to his journals, Vallée's supervisors told him the Americans would laugh at us. Vallée thought that was a bunch of... well, he disagreed.

He left Paris in 1962 and moved to America, where the scientific community was more open-minded. By the way, Vallée is still alive and this is something that bothers him to this day. He wasn't a UFO guy before spotting the Black Knight satellite, but he became one after. He's written 15 books and tons of papers challenging mainstream science and supporting the existence of UFOs.

He refers to all the collective UFO sightings and experiences as the phenomenon. Up until now, the only sighting of the Black Knight satellite came from astronomers and observatories on the ground. To really prove the existence of the Black Knight, we need an eyewitness to go to orbit and see it with their own eyes. And just 18 months later, that's exactly what happened. Gordon Cooper was the stereotypical 1960s American astronaut. Short hair, fast car, cocky attitude. He learned to fly when he was just a child. He became a fighter pilot,

test pilot, and one of the first astronauts. In 1963, he piloted Mercury 9, which was the longest American space mission ever at that time. One of the objectives of Mercury 9 was to verify that man can function for an extended period in space as a primary operating system of the spacecraft. This mission was not for the faint of heart. And Gordon Cooper was like somebody out of a movie. When his landing module experienced total systems failure, he did what a movie hero would do.

He switched everything off and brought a ship down manually. He splashed down safely just four miles off target. This made him the first astronaut to perform complete manual reentry. And this experience didn't scare him at all. He kept going to space and kept breaking endurance records. Here's how tough Cooper was. To this day, he's the only person ever to fall asleep during a liftoff. He'd done it so many times he was bored and decided to take a nap. We all know the names Neil Armstrong and Alan Shepard, but those astronauts stood on

the shoulders of men like Colonel Gordon Cooper. Anyway, during Mercury 9, Cooper reported seeing a green glowing object ahead of his module. His ground crew confirmed this and a tracking station saw it moving east to west, crow-grade orbit. NBC News immediately picked up the story, but when Cooper got back from the mission, the press was not allowed to ask about the sighting. The official explanation was there was an electrical malfunction on Cooper's craft. This caused high levels of carbon dioxide, which induced hallucinations. Yep, the guy who's so cool under pressure that he falls asleep during takeoff was seeing things.

Then somehow he regathered his wits just in time to manually land a spacecraft for the first time ever in history. While he was at NASA and active military, Gordon Cooper felt duty-bound to follow orders about what he saw, and he denied the sighting. But after he retired, that's a different story. Cooper claimed that while he was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, he saw a strange saucer-shaped craft. The saucers made no sound as they landed on retractable gear. Cooper said that even the most fearless test pilots were shaken by the things they saw at Edwards. And Edwards Air Force Base was also the planned setting for the Grumman Aircraft Project to track and capture the dark satellite a few years later. Edwards Air Force Base is located in Southern

California and famous for being the testing ground for advanced planes and engines during the Cold War. This installation not only lies within the optimum latitude range for tracking satellites, except those in low equatorial orbits, but offers excellent year-round weather and atmospheric clarity. Distinct advantages to a surveillance operation of this type. In addition, Grumman personnel, who will be running the program, are thoroughly familiar with the transportation, supply, and housing facilities at the base, having conducted several demonstrations for the military there in the past. Gordon Cooper served as a test pilot at Edwards until he was selected for the astronaut

program. And right up until his death, Cooper claimed that the U.S. government was definitely covering up information about UFOs. He could recall hundreds of reports made by fellow pilots that were confirmed by radar. Cooper even testified before the United Nations about this. Sightings and transmissions piled up over the years. Reports by famous scientists, inventors, and highly respected astronauts. It became increasingly difficult to deny that something is up there. So the bigger questions are, what is it? Why is it here? And what does it want? Well, we would get that answer in 1973. Almost 50 years after Jorgen Halls first heard echoes from his radio transmissions, Duncan Lunnan, a researcher from Scotland, went back and analyzed the data.

Duncan Lunnan found a pattern in the old data, and in that pattern, a message. And in that message, a map. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding

thrillers on Audible. In 1973, an article was published in Spaceflight magazine. This was the official publication of the British Interplanetary Society. Duncan London said he had identified a hidden radio message sent by the Black Knight satellite. The article is dense, but the introduction by Kenneth Gatland, a leading space theorist, sums it up. The theory stems from original work by Mr. D.A. Lunan, a graduate of Glasgow University, who found that certain long-delayed echoes of equally spaced radio signals transmitted from Earth could be interpreted in the form of a code. The data used by Mr. Lunan

are those recorded in the 1920s by Norwegian, Dutch, and French experimenters, who noted that delay times of the echoes varied from one signal to the next. This paper, which attempts to interpret the pattern so formed, suggests that a space probe in the vicinity of the Earth may have been trying to make contact by returning our own signals. It is suggested that the signals of October 1928 were star maps, identifying the probe's origin as the double star Epsilon Buddhis, and putting its arrival here at 13,000 years in the past. London had gone back to the LDE data and noticed variations that might indicate a code, so

he put the data on a 2D graph. On one axis was the time delay between echoes. On the other axis, the position of each echo in the sequence. Plotting these points didn't create any recognizable pattern. So Lunan reversed the axes. The result? A collection of dots appeared to be a sky map, specifically of the constellation Boötes. The only star in the constellation that was out of place was Epsilon Boötis. Lunan felt this could indicate the Black Knight satellite's origin. But Lunan admitted this evidence was shaky. So he found more radio echoes reported by French

astronomers in 1929. The graphs confirmed it was the same constellation. There was one big problem though. Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation, was slightly off-center. Lunan couldn't explain this, so he changed his thinking. Maybe the satellite didn't arrive here recently. Maybe it was showing a star map from a time in the past. Now, stay with me here. The Earth rotates on its axis.

And over time, gravity causes this axis to wobble, like a top. But it's consistent and predictable. The orientation of the Earth's axis makes a full cycle every 26,000 years. So over long spans of time, the stars in the sky look slightly different. This rotation of the sky map is called axial precession. Arcturus was slightly out of place for 1973, but when London adjusted the map further back in time, accounting for axial precession, the stars lined up. The Black Night satellite didn't just arrive here. It's been here, according to the map, for 13,000 years.

London said the diagrams were so clear that they could be interpreted as a message in standard English. Our home is Upsilon Bu Otis, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps. Even though these reports were in the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other mainstream news outlets, nobody, at least officially, took the subject of UFOs or the Black Knight satellite seriously.

But in 1998, everything would change when Space Shuttle Endeavour embarked on mission STS-88, the first shuttle mission to the International Space Station. The primary purpose of this mission was to deliver and install a piece of equipment called the Unity Node. Unity connects the Russian and American segments together, where the crews can share meals or just hang out. The seven-day mission was a success, and the Unity Node was installed. But that wasn't the most notable event of the mission.

On December 11th, a series of photos were taken and released by NASA. They show what appears to be some type of craft in orbit around the Earth. It seems that after 100 years of speculation, we finally have proof of the mysterious Black Knight satellite. That leaves one question, our favorite. Why is it here?

One theory is that it's an alien probe, sent to monitor our species and our progress. It would make sense that if there's an advanced intelligent civilization somewhere in the galaxy, they would send probes to every star that could possibly support life. When humans reach this level of technology, I have no doubt that we'll do the same thing. And if the Black Knight satellite is an alien probe, could the radio signals be reporting back to its home ship or home planet?

Or could the signals be for us? Could they be sending us a map as a sort of interstellar handshake? Or maybe it's not an alien probe at all, but a piece of technology left by our ancestors thousands or millions of years ago. There are multiple ancient texts that describe a dark object orbiting the earth. Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics reference Vimanas, flying palaces or chariots. Some call it a dark ark that was put here thousands of years ago. The ark contains the DNA information of human-like species from long ago. Aware that some catastrophe was going to doom the civilization, they put their DNA somewhere safe.

A place that doesn't care about ice ages, sea levels or even nuclear war. What's safer place than an orbit around the Earth? And by placing the Ark in orbit, you not only ensure the safety of its contents, you ensure that the only way to become aware of it is by reaching a certain level of technology. We have the ability to visit the Black Knight satellite. We could send a craft to it right now

to try and discover its secrets, or we could bring it back to Earth and share its secrets with the rest of the world. Why haven't we done this? Well, who knows? But maybe the reason the Black Knight satellite is kept secret from the world is because someone has already visited. Maybe they even opened it. And maybe they didn't like what they found.

You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. The Black Knight Satellite is a fascinating story.

The modern version of the legend is a combination of a few stories rolled into one. So let's unravel the truth, throw away what's false, and see what's left. Tesla and Marconi did hear radio pulses, but they weren't aliens. They were pulsars, the cores of giant stars that emit radio waves. Now, pulsars weren't discovered until 1968, so they would have definitely sounded like an intelligent broadcast to Tesla. Aliens could still be using pulsars to communicate. That would be an efficient way to do it, but they weren't coming from the black night. The LDEs, or long

delayed radio echoes, are harder to explain. They're still a mystery, but most scientists think it's something in the atmosphere that's causing it. Another theory is that the signals are reflecting off plasma clouds from the sun. A fun theory is that the signals are being reflected back from the moon. Whatever's causing it, we still don't know. The astronaut Gordon Cooper claimed in his autobiography that while he did personally witness and hear many firsthand accounts about UFO sightings during his long career, including at Edwards Air Force Base,

he didn't see anything out of the ordinary during the Mercury 9 mission. While the Grumman report could include all sorts of interesting things, they're unlikely to be about the Black Knight. The initial sightings of the retrograde object they were tracking was described as being the color of straw, and the Black Knight is, well, black. Duncan Lennon's translation of the LDE's into star maps doesn't hold up to scrutiny. He later walked the claims back, saying there wasn't scientific evidence. He was just deducing what he thought the signals could mean. But since then, he's revised his opinion once again and thinks Epsilon Biotis is special.

The pictures from NASA are amazing. The official explanation is that during a spacewalk, an astronaut was installing a thermal cover. The cover got away from him and ended up floating away. The pictures were taken to document this. That's the official explanation, a space blanket. And in some of the photos, it does look like a flat, shiny object. But in other photos, it looks pretty solid. So let's assume the earliest evidence, the radio signals, and the latest evidence, the photos, are debunked. The evidence in between gets really fuzzy. For example, there was a newspaper report of an object spotted in 1960. The US

government said this was actually the Discoverer 5 capsule that got off course. Fine, but why was it moving in retrograde when satellites didn't do that? The government said that it malfunctioned and thrusters sent it in the wrong direction. Okay, if that's true and it was the Discoverer 5, which was entered into the database in 1960, how does that explain that even though the news report was from 1960, it was actually referring to a sighting a year earlier, 1959. Well, the government said that someone accidentally entered the wrong date into the system. I know, I'm just reporting what happened. What makes the story even more suspicious

is that all of that was a lie anyway. The military was using Discoverer as a cover story for the Corona Project, a spy satellite program operated by the CIA. It kept that information classified for years. So let's assume that sighting is debunked. What about all the other evidence? Sightings from around the world confirmed by governments and private citizens. Where are the findings from the Grumman Aircraft Project? Why were Jacques Vallée's photographs and film mysteriously destroyed?

Why are there astronauts claiming there's an active cover-up? There are a lot of questions left unanswered. Do I think Tesla heard the Black Knight satellite? No. Do I think the NASA photos are the Black Knight satellite? No. Do I believe eyewitness reports

from astronauts and astronomers who put their reputations in jeopardy by speaking out? Yes, yes, I do. There is clearly more to this story that we're not being told. And because you're listening right now, I know you care about the truth. You have to keep asking questions. Keep the pressure on. Those in power will try to dismiss you.

They will not take you seriously. But that, too, is a lie. Those in power take you very seriously. They can silence one astronomer. They can silence one astronaut but they can't silence all of us. You can feel the dominoes about to fall. I feel it too.

It's going to take courage for someone to push that first domino but once it finally falls, they all fall. And when that happens, there's no story you'd like to learn more about, go to the Y Files dot com slash tips. A special thanks to our patrons who make The Y Files possible. I dedicate every episode to you and I couldn't do this without your support. And if you'd like to support the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as three bucks a month, you get early access to videos without commercials, you get first dibs on products like the hecklefish

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