Huge chest hoisted aboard space station
Florida ? Astronauts hitched a giant chest of drawers to the international space station on Monday that contained a brand new freezer, sleeping compartment and treadmill bearing a TV comedian’s name.
The Italian-built chest — nicknamed Leonardo, as in Leonardo da Vinci — was moved from space shuttle Discovery via a hefty robot arm and hoisted onto the space station.
It’s loaded with nearly 8 tons of equipment and science experiments for the orbiting outpost and its six residents. Much of the gear is stored in portable racks; the bedroom is the size of a phone booth.
NASA’s brand new $5 million treadmill will be one of the first items to come out of Leonardo. It’s officially called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT for short.