In the fall of 1964, the international science fiction and adventure almanac "Galaxy" in the "Anomalous" section published a selection of messages about an unidentified space object (NPO) "Black Prince".
The article also talked about how an amateur astronomer discovered a dark spot traveling at unimaginable speed across the lunar disk, and that the mysterious object is a V-rocket, designed by the Nazis for suborbital flights.
Another hypothesis was put forward: before us is a mothballed spacecraft, the crew of which disappeared while landing on Earth during the Tunguska explosion … By the way, the last version was expressed by the famous Soviet science fiction writer A. P. Kazantsev. He gave the orbital "artifact" the poetic name "Black Prince". The writer believed that the object could be a satellite of an alien ship that caused the Tunguska miracle.
"Black Prince" as well as "Demon"
Kazantsev's science fiction story "Explosion" was published in 1946 by the magazine "Around the World". Subsequently, the writer tried in every possible way to substantiate his theory of the "Tunguska diva" and closely followed the anomalous astronomical observations confirming his conclusions. As soon as the first information about the "dark ghost" in the earth's orbit appeared, Kazantsev immediately proposed his own version of the alien odyssey.
According to the science fiction writer, an inhabited landing module tragically died over the Siberian taiga, and the spaceship itself, driven by machine guns, remained in the polar orbit of the Earth. Half a century later, the cybernetic brain of a foreign ship gave an order to self-destruct in order to avoid contact of earthlings with dangerous extraterrestrial technologies …
There have even appeared photographs, allegedly taken by one of NASA's spy satellites, showing a strange dark object. Journalists immediately called him for his unusual shape "The Dark Knight", and later the names "Black Prince" and "Ghost of Darkness" were added to this romantic image. Sometimes in the press it also flashed its name - "Black Demon".
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Probe or plasmoid?
After a series of newspaper reports, the mysterious object came to the attention of a special project of the Pentagon "Blue Book", engaged in the analysis of reports of all kinds of UFOs. Military representatives collected data on the object's orbit and began their own research. After a series of investigations, NASA military experts have not managed to get on the trail of the "Dark Knight". The final report of the Blue Book argued that amateur astronomers most likely observed ordinary large meteorites that occasionally cross the lunar disk.
In 1965, the famous American astrophysicist Ron Bracewell, in his work "Signals from highly developed galactic civilizations", developed his early hypothesis that the "Black Prince" (which he renamed from the author's ambitions to "The Dark Knight") is nothing more than an alien automatic probe …
Such devices, later called "Bracewell probes", could successfully explore the galactic expanses and collect information for relaying the civilization that sent them. Subsequently, Bracewell's theory was developed and supplemented by a prominent Russian researcher of the problems of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, Professor L. V. Xanfomality.
At the same time, the Condon Committee, well-known in ufological circles, organized and headed by Colorado professor Edward Condon, considered the hypothesis about the NPO-plasmoid, but scientists did not come to a consensus on this issue. The question became even more confused after the discovery of "ghost lightning", which throw clouds of negative ions into the ionosphere. Geophysicists and meteorologists believe that it was these phenomena that astronomers-ufologists for a long time mistook for NPOs.
Orbital accidents
In the 1990s, there were two mysterious accidents with NASA's military communications satellites. Then the Pentagon issued a statement that, perhaps, we are dealing with a collision with some large object. This immediately gave rise to rumors that the real reason for the death of the satellites was their collision with the "Dark Knight". Well, since the likelihood of such events is negligible, it was concluded that this NPO is still in an active mode and destroys the devices that discovered it.
After repeated sounding of the earth's ionosphere, radio physicists have accumulated a lot of data, among which were all kinds of "radio voices" of space. It should be noted that radio waves are emitted by many celestial bodies, from Jupiter and the Sun to distant radio galaxies.
Brightly shines on the galactic "radio sky" and our planet, since the 1920s, shrouded in the "radio smog" of radio and television stations. This data was used by a group of astronomers, who discovered that an object between the Earth and the Moon is intensively exchanging radio data with the star Epsilon Bootes. Moreover, enthusiasts of contact with another mind argue that the dislocation of the constellation itself is also encountered in cosmic radio voices.
Well, the inconsistencies in the stellar coordinates are easily explained by ufologists by the change in the stellar picture of the sky over the past millennia (most often, for some reason, a figure of ten millennia is given).
Thus, according to supporters of contact, the star epsilon is clearly in the wrong place, and its displacement points to the home planetary system of the "Dark Knight". But all further attempts to clarify the real star address of the dark NPO ended in complete failure due to the lack of real data.
Bigbye orbital family
American amateur astronomer John Bigbye had a rather rare area of interest - he was looking for space objects captured by Earth's gravity and became natural satellites of our planet. In 1967, he published a note in an astronomical journal about a dozen orbiting objects that could have been the remnants of some large body torn apart by Earth's gravity.
The story of another member of the "knightly family" - "The Ghost of Darkness" - began with the observations of an unknown object by American astronomers J. Hammond and T. Cragg in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1956, their observations were independently confirmed, and on May 4, 1957, John Bigbyu brought them into a single family.
The orbits he calculated had an interesting version of the past. On December 18, 1955, they all came together, which could be interpreted as a one-time disintegration of some natural satellite. The specific reasons for this small catastrophe are unlikely to ever become known, and everything can be assumed here: from an accidental meteor strike to some internal processes.
With the passage of time, publications about all kinds of orbital non-profit organizations caused a wave of sharp professional criticism. First of all, astronomers questioned the methodology for calculating the orbits of members of the Bigbye family of satellites. Indeed, for long-term forecasts of the past and future of celestial bodies, hundreds are needed, not units of observations!
Ultimately, several explanations for the nature of Bigby's objects were proposed. Among them were purely optical effects of atmospheric inhomogeneity, and meteorological and ionospheric phenomena, and celestial bodies like asteroids occasionally flying by.
When ufologists see the merger and separation of all kinds of NGOs, ground observation services most often record collisions of space debris with each other, which is why their number continues to multiply and grow exponentially. At the same time, small fragments are no less dangerous than large NPOs, which are often mistaken for alien ships.
Each collision causes a cloud of debris to appear, which quickly scatter in all directions and in a few weeks form a kind of belt, threatening to destroy all vehicles that fall on a given orbital level …
Long arms
Unfortunately, almost all reports about NPOs are difficult to verify. For example, back in June 1965, astronaut James McDivitt observed a strange object from Gemini 4 with "long arms sticking out." The NASA Mission Control Center immediately demanded to photograph it, but after the Gemini landed, the picture was never found.
There are many stories about NPOs observed from the Salyut and Mir orbital stations. Sometimes they were mysterious orbital "dark spheres", obscuring the light of the stars for a moment, and sometimes some silvery balls in the stratosphere. Especially many NGOs have recorded video cameras of the International Space Station (ISS).
For example, on one of the rollers it is clearly visible how a round gray object of indeterminate size is floating past the station, spinning. In another case, a whole group of objects glittering under the rays of the Sun flies past the ISS. Sometimes objects disappear and reappear, and sometimes they even separate and merge together.
Experts from NASA and Roskosmos in all cases are in a hurry to disappoint the enthusiasts of the hypothesis of the existence of NGOs, proving that instead of aliens, ufologists noticed spent stages of launch vehicles or antenna modules that fell off the ISS hull.
Today, NASA is trying in every possible way to avoid various speculations on the topic of NPOs and for this periodically puts all the video materials obtained in free access. Ufologists and amateur astronomers try not to miss this opportunity and study in detail pixel by pixel everything that may be related to alien artifacts. To their disappointment, all attempts to open new nonprofits come across a ruthless verdict - a "technical error".
Maybe this is where the solution to the appearance and disappearance of strange bodies in Earth's orbit is hidden?
Oleg FAIG