NASA Treadmill Named After Stephen Colbert

NASA decided not to name a space station node after Stephen Colbert, but they did opt to name a treadmill on the space station after Colbert. The node’s new name will be Tranquility, which comes from the landing site of Apollo 11 called Sea of Tranquility.

The treadmill name comes from the acronym COLBERT which stands for Combined Operational Load Bearing Resistance Treadmill. COLBERT is used to help astronauts to maintain their strength and bone density while in space.

An associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, from NASA said:

"We don’t typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception. We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on."

Looks like NASA made an exception for Colbert.