Shuttle Astronauts Move In at Space Station

This story was updated at 10:13 p.m. EDT.

It was moving day at the International Space Station Monday as astronauts installed a cargo module packed full of fresh supplies, science gear and a treadmill named after comedian Stephen Colbert.

The cargo module arrived at the station late Sunday aboard the shuttle Discovery and is crammed with 8 tons of equipment for the orbiting laboratory?s six-person crew.

?It looks like a giant canister from the outside,? said Discovery astronaut Patrick Forrester in a NASA interview. ?I like to think of it almost like a moving van.?

Discovery astronauts and the station crew used the orbiting laboratory?s robotic arm to pluck the nearly 14-ton Leonardo cargo module from the shuttle payload bay and attach it to an open berth on the outpost. The move took about three hours and astronauts plan to enter the cargo pod in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

Big load for station

Packed inside the cargo module are sophisticated science experiments to study new materials and fluid physics. A new air-scrubbing device to clean the station?s air and an astronaut bedroom are also stowed aboard Leonardo along with other science gear and supplies.

A treadmill named after TV comedian Stephen Colbert, of Comedy Central?s ?The Colbert Report,? will also be moved into the space station by Discovery?s crew. NASA named the treadmill for Colbert as a consolation prize after he won an online poll to have a new space station room named after him earlier this year. NASA named that room Tranquility instead, but dubbed the treadmill the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT.

The COLBERT treadmill launched to the space station in a myriad of pieces stored in several bags that will be moved to a storage berth inside the station. It will take astronauts about 20 hours to assemble the treadmill, but they won?t touch the exercise gear until at least mid-September, after the arrival of a new unmanned Japanese cargo ship, NASA officials have said.

Discovery astronauts are slated to begin hauling cargo out of Leonardo on Tuesday and prepare to load it up with trash and other unneeded items to be returned to Earth.

?There?s always a challenge in that,? Forrester said. ?It would be as if a moving van showed up at your house full and somehow you needed to get everything off of that into your house, and then everything in your house back into that moving van, and so there?s a little bit of a shell game going on.?

Shuttle in good shape

LeRoy Cain, NASA?s deputy shuttle program manager, said Discovery?s heat shield appears to be in good health with respect to launch debris. Engineers cleared the shuttle?s heat shield for re-entry pending a final standard inspection just before landing to check for any new damage from space debris or micrometeorites.

Engineers are also working to certify a method of using Discovery?s larger reaction control thrusters to move the entire linked shuttle-station structure when required. Discovery cannot fire its smaller thrusters, which are normally used at the station, because one has a leak. After the shuttle docked at the station Sunday, the station used its own Russian-built thrusters to move the two linked spacecraft, but consumed more propellant than normal.

?What we?re really talking about doing is just trying to do the most efficient thing for both the shuttle and the station,? said Cain, who likened the different attitude control systems on the shuttle and station to having three cars at home, and one has more fuel efficiency than the rest. ?We?re trying to be smart about what we?re doing and evaluate the options that we have.?

The space station has plenty of fuel for its Russian thrusters and has NASA-built gyroscopes that use no propellant whatsoever, Cain said. NASA wants to have a plan in place on which system to use, the station?s or Discovery?s, during undocking and in case the linked spacecraft need to dodge space junk, Cain said.

In addition to moving in at the station today, Discovery astronauts will also prepare for the first of three spacewalks of their mission. That spacewalk, aimed at removing an old - but huge - ammonia coolant tank from the station and retrieving a European experiment, is scheduled to begin late Tuesday.

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SPACE.com is providing complete coverage of Discovery's STS-128 mission to the International Space Station with Managing Editor Tariq Malik and Staff Writer Clara Moskowitz in New York. Click here for shuttle mission updates and a link to NASA TV.