Will Colbert Be Going to Space?

HOUSTON, April 2, 2009— -- Carmakers struggle with it, so do sports teams and companies turning out new products: Picking out a memorable name that identifies a product in one word. The list of failures is endless.

NASA has the same problem. The space agency has already used most of the good names. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Voyager … well, you get the idea.

So many spacecraft, so few names.

With that in mind, the brain trust at NASA decided to put the name of the next module to go up to the space station up for an online vote. Did it backfire? Of course.

Stephen Colbert put viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report," up to going online and voting to name the next segment Colbert.

And of course, his name is winning the contest.

In order, the Top 5 vote-getters in NASA's voting so far are:

Colbert

My Yearbook

Gaia

Xenu

Socialvibe

That was not quite the response anticipated by the image makers at NASA, who were most likely hoping for something like Serenity or Venture or Earthrise. They are lucky their voting didn't get hijacked by "Halo 3" or Britney Spears fans.

It's put the space agency in an awkward position, something acting administrator Bill Gerstenmaier admitted after the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery Saturday.

No matter how the voting turns out, though, it's highly doubtful NASA will allow the new addition to be named Colbert. Read the fine print on the voting guidelines.

"NASA will take into consideration the results of the voting," the guidelines say. "However, the results are not binding on NASA and NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the agency, its needs, and other considerations. Such name may not necessarily be one which is on the list of voted-on candidate names. NASA's decision shall be deemed final."

ABC News asked the two American astronauts on the space station their opinion of naming the new addition Colbert.

Newcomer Mike Barrett confessed he didn't know much about it.