Ryan M. Patrick

Post on on one of my favorite conspiracy theories, the Black Knight satellite! It’ll play a huge role in the sequel to The Martian Incident, The Saturn Anomaly.

For the uninitiated, the Black Knight is supposedly a 13,000-year-old spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin in a nondecaying polar orbit that emits a repeating signal. The existence of this satellite has been covered up by NASA and the military.

Nikola Tesla and other scientists around the turn of the 20th century supposedly received these transmissions, but none of that is confirmed – it’s all speculation.

The early days of the American space program had some reports of satellites in orbit prior to Sputnik, but, again, it was all unconfirmed or speculation. However, images from a Shuttle mission spoked the conspiracy theory further.

This image from the STS-88 mission in 1998 shows an unidentified object floating in orbit near the International Space Station. But this was actually a thermal blanket, used to protect spacecraft components, from earlier in that mission!

It had gotten away from an astronaut during an EVA and floated away from the station. NORAD tracked and cataloged the blanket, but that image – and others – has been on thousands of YouTube videos and conspiracy blogs.

The Black Knight satellites does not exist. But what if it was real?

In The Saturn Anomaly, a (fictional) space shuttle mission launches in 1988 to deploy an SDI prototype. But, after they do so, they are tasked to recover a strange-looking satellite that they are told is a DARPA prototype.

However, after they get it into the payload bay, one of the crew starts complaining about head pain and seeing a “light,” then attacks the mission commander! The rest of the astronauts have to subdue him and lock him away.

Meanwhile, in 2078, John Cameron (the main character from The Martian Incident) arrives on a station orbiting Saturn to investigate a collision with a NASA-contracted supply ship. But military secrecy surrounds everything, and the station’s denizens act odder by the day.

How are the two storylines connected? Well, when I finish The Saturn Anomaly (76,000 words done!) and get it edited & through the Pentagon, you’ll find out!