Saturday, July 18, 1998

But it can yell, 'Duck!'

Sensationalize it, and the government programs will follow.

Thanks to movies like "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" and TV shows like "Asteroid" and countless lurid magazine covers about asteroids and comets destroying Earth, or at least seriously damaging midtown Manhattan, NASA has set up a special office to track threatening stuff in space.

The prosaically named Near-Earth Object Program Office will track most of the 2,000 or so asteroids and comets that streak around in the vicinity of our planet. The new office -- NOPO? -- can only detect the destructive intruders, it can't do anything about them.

Always that one little glitch in the planning.