This mysterious photo is one that was taken by astronauts during a U.S. space shuttle mission to the International Space Station in 1998. It is the mysterious orbiting object known as the Black Knight Satellite. It is in near-polar orbit above the Earth and many believe it is thousands of years old and of extraterrestrial origin. Supposedly Nikola Tesla picked up repeating radio signals off of it in 1899.

Though amateur radio operators and astronomers worldwide have been reporting strange radio signals emanating from the satellite since the 1930s, information about the Black Knight didn’t come to light until 1954 when numerous newspapers, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the San Francisco Examiner, ran stories about it. Retired naval aviator and UFO researcher Don Keyhoe told the newspapers that the U.S. Air Force has known about the mysterious satellite orbiting the planet. Back then, in 1954, there were no man-made satellites (Sputnik wouldn’t be launched for another three years). The story soon became a major media interest.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union became particularly interested in the satellite, each believing it might belong to the other. Other countries, such as Sweden, began to take interest too. In 1957, a Venezuelan government official photographed it while tracking Sputnik II as it passed over Caracas. He noted that as Sputnik, and other satellites, orbit west to east using Earth’s natural rotation to maintain orbit, the strange Black Knight orbits east to west. Whether it’s just space junk or an alien satellite, the Black Knight has been around for a long time. With numerous photographs, many still remain skeptical about what it is and where it came from.