State Department joins hashtag fight against rogue asteroids.

Scientists at NASA are adopting the State Department’s Hashtag Diplomacy to the space agency’s planetary defense systems. According to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, “hashtag engineering holds great promise for the future of the planet.”

When I became the NASA administrator, President Obama charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to find out why our satellites are lying to us about global warming; he wanted me to send Ted Cruz to Mars; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Asteroid belt and engage much more with the often undocumented rocks that sometimes enter Earth’s atmosphere.

The goal is to help them feel good about their historic contribution to the solar system, and perhaps to convince them not to slam into the earth at orbital velocities.

The NASA administrator assured Americans that if these asteroids cannot be diverted from our path, Earth is capable of absorbing many asteroids more easily than any other planet.

According to Bolden, NASA is proposing a permanent delegation to appeal to rogue asteroids to self-divert themselves out of collision course with our own privileged planet. The delegation would leverage Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media platforms that have proven success combatting human trafficking in West Africa, and rolling back territorial aggression in Eastern Europe.

President Obama supported Bolden’s plan over the weekend in a speech to the National Geographic Society.

“The Planetary Defense Coordination Office will be like the movie Armageddon, but with diplomats and lawyers instead of scientists and engineers,” said the President. “And with tweets instead of deep-sea oil drills. This will ensure an environmentally-sound approach to planetary defense, and one that adheres to the stated policy of this administration to reduce reliance on drilling for oil.”

The President further announced that the computers used for the social outreach effort will run on solar energy purchased from Canada.

Predictably, the President’s hardline critics on the right have ridiculed the administration’s asteroid oil-free peace plan, and claim that his plan to alter asteroid orbits through tweeting is “the worst kind of mass delusion, arrogant ignorance, and adolescent science.”

Some experts in the PDCO have begun to embrace the idea of welcoming a Social Meteor of Darkness. Many argue that if the President better explained the many beneficial outcomes that outweigh any minor damage an asteroid impact might cause, the public might support more asteroid impacts, rather than fewer.

“A large asteroid impact will completely turn the corner on our fight against global warming,” said one activist in the Planetary Defense office, “potentially bringing man-made carbon production down to pre-technology levels.”

In his icy lair in the eternal void, celebrity Asteroid SMOD chuckled at the “pathetic earthlings, hurling their posts out into the void”, and promised to personally respond to any tweets sent its way.