NASA And Stephen Colbert

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is in the process of adding a module to the International Space Station. As with the other modules in the space station, they wanted to give the new module a name. But this time, they decided it would be some good publicity for the agency to let the general public choose the name.

NASA set up a poll on their website and asked the general public to vote. The names they suggested were Serenity, Legacy, Earthrise and Venture. But they also allowed the public to suggest their own names.

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert learned of the vote, and decided the new module should be named "Colbert". He asked his fans to go to NASA's site and vote for the module to be named after him. Several thousand of them did exactly that -- so many that the name "Colbert" easily outpaced all of the names suggested by NASA.

At first, NASA didn't react well to this. They removed the poll from their website and announced the vote was just a suggestion. They said they would decide what the new module's name would be.

Now it looks like they realized they made a publicity mistake, and they're trying to fix it. They are sending astronaut Sunita Williams to appear on Colbert's TV show next Tuesday night. While there, she will officially announce the name of the new module.

We still don't know what the name will be -- Colbert or one of the four suggested names. That won't be known until Tuesday. But at least the agency doesn't look so staid, now that they're sort of going along with the joke.

As for Stephen Colbert, he says, "I certainly hope NASA does the right thing. Just kidding. I hope they name it after me."