NASA Christens Space Station Treadmill 'COLBERT'

April 15, 2009 12:02 a.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - The U.S. space agency NASA on Tuesday christened a room at the International Space Station as Tranquility and not after comedian Stephen Colbert's last name. Instead, COLBERT was used to name the station's treadmill.

Colbert, host of Comedy Central's late night satirical news show "The Colbert Report," was widely suggested during a NASA voting contest as the name for Node 3, the ISS's life support system room, where oxygen is produced and urine is recycled into drinking water. With the host's TV campaign, NASA received 230,000 votes for his name beating 40,000 votes suggesting "Serenity" as the name.

But NASA decided to name the room after the site of the first moon landing. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. landed on the moon's Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago this July.

As a consolation for Colbert, NASA renamed Treadmill-2 as Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, the acronym of which is COLBERT.

The Tranquility room will be launched next year while COLBERT will be launched in August.