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Ray Walston, actor, dies
Actor Ray Walston, best known for his starring role as My Favorite Martian but also famous for recurring roles on Picket Fences and both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, dies at the age of 86. His appearances on Picket Fences earned him two successive supporting actor Emmy awards in 1995 and 1996. Walston also made countless appearances in other television shows, ranging from both the theatrical version and the short-lived TV spinoff of Fast Times At Ridgemont High, to the miniseries based on Stephen King’s The Stand, episodes of Buck Rogers, Mission: Impossible, Amazing Stories, Night Court, Friday The 13th: The Series, Ally McBeal, and Touched By An Angel, and even a one-off attempt to revive ALF.
The first movie-length installment episode of the miniseries RoboCop: Prime Directives airs on Space in Canada (the series will air in the U.S. on the Sci-Fi Channel in July). Starring Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker), Maurice Dean Wint (Captain Power, TekWar, Psi Factor), Geraint Wyn-Davies (Forever Knight), and Maria Del Mar (Mercy Point), the series picks up the story of RoboCop over a decade after the original 1987 film. It is unrelated to the 1994 live-action series based on the same character, although this miniseries is produced by the same production company, exercising their TV rights to the character one last time before that option expires.
Pay cable channel Showtime airs the 80th episode of Stargate SG-1. Lawrence Dane (Scanners), Tom McBeath, and Ronny Cox (RoboCop) guest star.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the 
The 169th episode of Chris Carter’s modern-day science fiction series The X-Files airs on Fox, starring Gillian Anderson and Robert Patrick. Michael Bowen and James Franco guest star.
The 89th episode of Joss Whedon’s supernatural series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, airs on the WB network. James Marsters, Anthony Stewart Head, and Alyson Hannigan also star.
The ninth episode of James Cameron & Charles H. Eglee’s cyberpunk series Dark Angel, starring Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly, airs on Fox. John Savage and rapper Mack 10 guest star.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the 
The 77th episode of Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, airs in syndication, starring Robert Leeshock, Jayne Heitmeyer, and Von Flores.
UPN airs the 
UPN broadcasts the ninth episode of the near-future sci-fi series Level 9, starring Fabrizio Filippo (Queer As Folk, Delilah & Julis), Kate Hodge (She-Wolf Of London), and Michael Kelly (House Of Cards). Howard Hesseman (WKRP In Cincinnati) guest stars in an episode directed by Goran Gajic (husband of Babylon 5 star Mira Furlan).
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the 
In response to a NASA request for mission proposals a month earlier, Southwest Research Institute scientist Dr. Alan Stern and a group of other scientists and engineers who had been working on the now-cancelled Pluto-Kuiper Express mission submit a nearly-identical proposal to NASA for a Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission called New Horizons. Very much like Pluto-Kuiper Express, New Horizons calls for a single small spacecraft to launch early in the 21st century, and, after a gravity assist from a Jupiter flyby, a Pluto encounter 10-11 years after launch. Some of the program costs are streamlined in the new proposal to make this iteration of the long-delayed Pluto mission more appealing to NASA, although New Horizons would carry more scientific payload than any previously envisioned Pluto expedition. Another proposal, Pluto and Outer Solar System Explorer (POSSE), is also submitted to NASA.
NASA releases a photo taken by the Cassini space probe as it passed by Jupiter and its complex system of satellites in December 2000, showing the first-ever view of the tiny moon Himalia, taken from a distance of 2.7 million miles. Non-spherical in shape, but estimated to be roughly 100 miles across its widest face, Himalia is believed to be an asteroid permanently captured into an inclined orbit of Jupiter. It was discovered in 1904 from Earth-based telescopes. The New Horizons space probe will also attempt to image Himalia in 2007. The sixth largest satellite of Jupiter, Himalia is the first of the planet’s outer satellites beyond the orbit of Callisto to be photographed by a passing spacecraft.
UPN airs the 
Sci-Fi Channel premieres the 
UPN airs the