Humanity has a long history with reports of odd things seen in Earth’s skies. For decades, reports of unidentified flying objects have captured the public imagination, with particular emphasis on descriptions of things likened to “flying saucers”, and more recently, large, ominous triangle-shaped craft that occasionally plod their way through the night sky at fairly low altitudes.
Harkening back to the early days of modern UFOlogy, there were reports of other things, as well. Beginning in the early 1950s, astronomers began to detect a number of unusual satellites circling the Earth, some of which moved against the natural spin of the planet in a retrograde orbit.
Today, the observation of such satellites is quite commonplace, and on any clear night, one can step out into a field or other area relatively free from city lights, and observe any number of objects reflecting sunlight as they traverse the sky overhead. However, until the launch of Sputnik I by the Russian space agency in 1957, there were no artificial satellites believed to have been launched into orbit, let alone any rockets powerful enough to carry one into space. Despite this, a number of odd observations occurred in those early days of the Space Age, many of which remain unidentified to this day.
The mystery all seemed to have begun around 1954, with a number of newspapers that featured stories quoting UFO proponent Donald Keyhoe, who around that time had overheard that the U.S. Air Force was monitoring two mysterious satellites orbiting Earth. Granted, at the time there shouldn’t have existed any technology capable of launching such a satellite into orbit; some further assert that Keyhoe’s statements had merely been in support of a new UFO book he had published. This might seem plausible, if not for the fact that Keyhoe revisited the “mystery satellite” cases from the 1950s in 1973, with the publication of his book Aliens From Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, which examined in greater depth the various observations of mystery satellites. In other words, it seems unlikely that Keyhoe brought up or borrowed the notion of mystery satellites purely as a publicity stunt.
Long-time UFO researcher and NICAP member Fran Ridge is also one who has taken note of these odd reports, discussing them in a lengthy article last year at the NICAP website. “At first there were reports in the 1950’s,” he said, “followed by reports in 1960, and more recently the reports of a Dark Star Satellite.” This “Dark Star” Ridge refers to here is, of course, the infamous “Black Knight Satellite”, an object that has appeared in many NASA photos over the last few years. Many continue to assert that the object is something akin to a 13,000 year old alien “probe” placed in Earth orbit by extraterrestrials long ago, with intent of studying the proceedings of human evolution as it ensued below. However, much to the chagrin of its proponents as a “genuine” alien vessel, the object that is commonly referenced as evidence of a “Black Knight Satellite” is well known to have been identified as a discarded thermal blanket from one of NASA’s EVA missions.
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This story originally posted on JimHarold.com. This excerpt posted with permission.
