You’ve probably seen the photo. It’s grainy, eerie, and looks like a jagged obsidian shard floating against the deep blue curve of the Earth. People call it the Black Knight. For years, the internet has insisted this is a 13,000-year-old alien satellite watching us from a polar orbit.
It’s a great story. Honestly, it’s one of the best space mysteries out there because it actually has "photographic proof." But if you dig into the actual mission logs from 1998, the reality is less about ancient aliens and more about a very frustrated astronaut who dropped something important.
The famous black knight satellite images didn't come from a secret spy telescope or a deep-space probe. They came from the Space Shuttle Endeavour during mission STS-88. This was a big deal at the time—the first American mission to start building the International Space Station (ISS).
The Day the "Knight" Was Born
It was December 1998. Astronauts Jerry Ross and James Newman were out on a spacewalk, trying to wrap the mating adapter between the Unity and Zarya modules with thermal blankets. These aren't like the blankets on your bed; they’re heavy-duty, multi-layered insulation (MLI) designed to keep the station from freezing or cooking in the sun.
Ross was working on a trunnion pin—a structural part used to hold the module in the shuttle’s cargo bay—when one of these thermal covers slipped.
Imagine being in orbit, moving at 17,500 miles per hour, and watching a piece of your equipment just... drift away. Ross actually cursed. He was annoyed. Commander Robert Cabana even radioed from inside the shuttle, saying, "Jerry, one of the thermal covers got away from you."
💡 You might also like: Square Root of 5: Why This Weird Little Number Changes Everything in Math
That "cover" is exactly what you’re looking at in those photos.
Why the Photos Look So Creepy
The reason those black knight satellite images look like an alien spacecraft is mostly due to the weirdness of light in space. There’s no atmosphere to scatter light, so shadows are pitch black and highlights are blindingly bright.
When the blanket floated away, it wasn't a flat sheet. It was crumpled and silver on one side, black on the other. As it tumbled, it took on these strange, jagged shapes.
NASA didn't hide the photos. They actually cataloged them. The object was officially labeled as space debris, specifically Object Number 25570. If NASA were trying to cover up a 13,000-year-old alien probe, they probably wouldn't have uploaded high-resolution scans of it to their public Johnson Space Center servers for everyone to download.
Connecting Dots That Aren't There
The legend of the Black Knight didn't start in 1998, though. That's the part that trips people up. Enthusiasts have basically retrofitted a bunch of unrelated historical weirdness into one single narrative.
- Tesla’s Radio Signals (1899): Nikola Tesla picked up rhythmic radio pulses in Colorado. He thought they were from Mars. Today, scientists like those at the SETI Institute think he might have been hearing signals from pulsars—distant, spinning stars—that wouldn't be officially discovered for another 60 years.
- Long-Delayed Echoes (1928): A Norwegian engineer named Jørgen Hals heard radio echoes that came back seconds after a transmission. It was weird, sure, but researchers now know this happens because of the way radio waves bounce off the ionosphere.
- The "Dark" Satellite (1960): The U.S. Navy spotted a mysterious object in a polar orbit. For a few weeks, everyone panicked, thinking it was a Soviet spy craft. It turned out to be a piece of a casing from the Discoverer 8 satellite that had gone off course.
In 1973, a writer named Duncan Lunan put all these pieces together. He suggested a 13,000-year-old probe from the star Epsilon Boötis was orbiting the Moon and sending signals. Lunan eventually admitted his methods were unscientific and walked back the theory, but the internet never let it go.
When the STS-88 photos appeared in the late 90s, the "Black Knight" fans finally had a visual to attach to the legend.
The Physics of "The Blanket"
Some people argue that a "blanket" couldn't look that solid or stay in orbit.
Well, it didn't stay in orbit. That’s a key detail people miss. Object 25570 followed a very predictable decay path. Because it was relatively light and had a lot of surface area, atmospheric drag at that low altitude (about 250 miles up) acted on it quickly.
Within about a week of floating away from Jerry Ross, the "Black Knight" hit the denser part of the atmosphere and burned up. It’s gone. It isn't currently orbiting Earth, and it definitely isn't 13,000 years old.
If you look at the sequence of photos from the mission—frames STS088-724-65 through 70—you can actually see the object change shape as it tumbles. In one frame, it looks like a craft. In another, it looks exactly like what it is: a piece of crumpled fabric caught in the sun.
How to Investigate This Yourself
If you're still skeptical, the best thing you can do is look at the raw data.
- Check the NASA Image Archives: Search for mission STS-88 and look at the "724" roll of film. You'll see the astronauts working, the ISS modules, and then the sequence of the lost thermal cover.
- Look for Space Debris Logs: You can find the tracking history for Object 25570. You’ll see exactly when it was cataloged and when it was de-orbited.
- Compare with modern UAP reports: Notice the difference between the "Black Knight" (which stays on a consistent, ballistic trajectory) and the "Tic-Tac" videos released by the Navy, which show objects moving in ways that defy physics. The Black Knight doesn't do that. It just drifts.
The Black Knight is a classic example of how we want the universe to be more "crowded" than it seems. We see a shape we don't recognize and our brains try to turn it into a story. But the real story—of human beings building a massive lab in the vacuum of space and losing a piece of equipment in the process—is honestly just as cool as any alien myth.
To see the difference for yourself, compare the STS-88 images with modern photos of MLI (Multi-Layer Insulation) used on the James Webb Space Telescope. You'll see the same shiny, crinkled texture that fooled so many people back in '98. The mystery isn't in the sky; it's in how we interpret what we see.
Actionable Next Steps
If you want to dive deeper into how space junk is tracked and identified, you can visit the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office website. They provide real-time updates on the thousands of objects currently being tracked in Earth's orbit. It’s a great way to understand just how crowded our "empty" space really is. Additionally, looking up the STS-88 mission transcripts will give you the literal play-by-play of the moment the blanket was lost, providing the human context that the viral images often strip away.