For the first time in many months, mankind's most distant probe is again communicating with Earth.

Thank Zeus! (And, not at all incidentally, those remarkably resourceful NASA engineers.)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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https://www.yahoo.com/tech/voyager-1-sending-data-back-231356636.html

Of course, it needs to leave us at some point so that it can come aboard the starship Enterprise sometime in the 2270s.

For those--including little ol' inconsequentai me--who tend to imagine the engineers who do all the heavy intellectual lifting at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are pretty much white guys:

The CBS Evening News [this date without Norah O'Donnell] closed out its broadcast tonight with a brief interview with the lead workaround-the-software-or-lose-the-probe engineer on this amazing achievement...white GAL Suzanne Dodd!

(Too bad O'Donnell had the night off at Black Rock in NYC; the always-feminist-tilting anchor would have been beaming widely with her lovely signature, blue-eyed-accentuating smile during her outro to this terrific, feel-good story.)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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Ms. Dodd is center, back to the camera in this shot amid this Smithsonian coverage [bunch of other ladies in there too]:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/voyager-1-sends-clear-data-to-nasa-for-the-first-time-in-five-months-180984209/

MJ <mjsmagic@aol.com> wrote:
> Of course, it needs to leave us at some point so that it can come aboard the starship Enterprise sometime in the 2270s.

TMP supposedly featured Voyager 6 and as of now 3 is not even being planned...this is 1 (which was launched after 2
but numbered lower because its trajectory would let it reach its Jupiter mission first).

Of course it's possible that 1 has encountered some Galaxy-Quest-level-naive extraterrestrials who
have watched broadcasts of TMP and are confusing it with interrogation about its still-fictional
younger sibling.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.