Colbert Does PSA for NASA

By Nancy Atkinson - February 2, 2012 at 8:07 PM UTC | Site News

In what might be the most unusual public service announcement for NASA, comedian Stephen Colbert uses his unique sense of humor to spread the word about the great things NASA is doing, especially on the International Space Station. But then, he WOULD support the ISS since NASA named an ISS treadmill after him when his name received the most entries in

a contest to name Node 3.

Since NASA doesn't usually name anything after living people, they named the node Tranquility and then used their incredible acronym-creating abilities to come up with the "Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill" (COLBERT).

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com