Play of the Day: Lassoing an Asteroid

Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert see NASA’s new plan and have questions.

Start of Brightcove Player By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.

North Korea's threats toward the United States continue to be in the news , as the one-year anniversary of leader Kim Jong-Un’s ascension to power was celebrated in the hermit kingdom. Conan O’Brien mentioned the anniversary in regards to Kim’s lack of height. The Tonight Show ’s Jay Leno went back to the early 2000s as he mentioned the recent Dick Cheney comments on the threat of North Korea and got in a dig at former president George W. Bush.

Elections were also a topic Thursday night. Leno looked a new survey that says half of voters would vote for Ronald Reagan over Obama, while The Daily Show ’s Jon Stewart was interested in the African-American vote in the 2012 election.

NASA announced plans this week to lasso an asteroid closer to the moon for study. Stephen Colbert noted this and was curious as to the purpose of the program, asking if the lasso was meant to bring space closer to Americans. O’Brien questioned the leadership of NASA for coming up with the program.

Fast forward to 2:35 to see why Colbert loves the lasso plan.