NEW YORK - Should this world ever cease to exist, Stephen Colbert will live on.
On Monday, Comedy Central will announce plans to digitize the comedian's DNA and send it to the International Space Station.
In October, video game designer Richard Garriott will travel to the station and deposit Colbert's genes for an "Immortality Drive."
Garriott, one of few private citizens to travel into space, is collecting material for a time capsule of human DNA, a history of humanity's greatest achievements and personal messages.
The host of "The Colbert Report" will essentially be preserved so that aliens can clone him.
Garriott said there are few better candidates to turn to in the unlikely event that humanity is destroyed and needs to be resurrected.
"I am thrilled to have my DNA shot into space, as this brings me one step closer to my lifelong dream of being the baby at the end of 2001," Colbert said in a statement, referring to the 1968 landmark science fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
