NASAs looking for help in identifying potentially dangerous asteroids.

This usually isnt a good sign.

When authorities ask the general public to help them do their jobs its an indication of trouble.

Police detectives solicit the public in providing leads for their investigations only when those investigations have reached a dead end.

And when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came up with the 2013 Python Challenge, a call for members of the public to compete for prize money in a hunt for Burmese pythons in the Everglades, it was a sure sign that the traditional methods for getting rid of those big snakes had failed.

So Im not cheered by NASAs latest plan to do a better job at identifying the number, size and location of asteroids hurtling by the planet.

Be an asteroid hunter in NASAs First Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest Series, the space agency announced for the contest that began on Monday.

NASAs offering $35,000 in prize money over the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids.

And you thought that finding pythons in the Everglades was tough.

NASAs trying to make this sound like lots of fun.

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Cerabino: NASAs plan to create public asteroid hunters is full of (black) holes