About the work
The space agency refers to the strange entity as item STS088-724-66 in its catalogue of space junk floating in low-Earth orbit (within 1,200 miles). Jerry Ross, an astronaut who took part in that mission, says that the object is a wayward thermal blanket that broke loose while his team tried to attach an American module to a Russian module on the ISS. But for a small, devoted following, it’s a 13,000-year-old, artificially made satellite known as the Black Knight.