ISS Trashing First Treadmill, COLBERT and Russian Model to Pick Up the Pace in Its Place

The International Space Station (ISS) has three treadmills for their occupants, which has become one too many. Earlierly erroneously reported to have been jettisoned with the trash on Tuesday, the first treadmill to operate aboard the ISS more than 200 miles above the Earth is indeed leaving its place in the sky, providing recuperation for ISS runners, for a fiery resting place—disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere.

The device, which isn't being used anymore, is called the TVIS, or Treadmill Vibration Isolation System. It will be discarded as the next unmanned resupply vehicle, the Progress M-18M, undocks at the end of July. Eventually it will burn up during the descent into Earth's atmosphere, along with other discarded supplies and the resupply vehicle.

But don't worry running fans, because the crew of the ISS has two other treadmills left: a new Russian-built treadmill and the advanced NASA C.O.L.B.E.R.T., named after NASA fan, mock-pundit, and comedian Stephen Colbert.

For more than a decade, the TVIS provided exercise for Americans, Russians and other astronauts from around the world, starting in November 2000. That's a total of 34 crews that kept their health and sanity thanks to the TVIS.

"There has been a history of treadmills, trying to get them to work pretty well in space, and it is no easy feat," said NASA astronaut Sunita Williams to collectSpace.com, who used the treadmill to keep her muscles from weakening during her two long-term missions aboard the ISS in 2006 and 2012. She was the first person to run a marathon in space in 2007, running the full 26.2 miles during that year's Boston Marathon. "It made it through the 26.2 miles without a fault," said Williams to collectSpace.com

In May, cosmonauts at the ISS uninstalled the TVIS and replaced it with the BD-2, which is Russia's first exercise machine in space since Mir. Americans had already replaced the TVIS in the U.S. module of the ISS with the newer and more advanced NASA treadmill called C.O.L.B.E.R.T. That extraordinary acronym stands for the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, and was named for Stephen Colbert in 2009.

The name was a good-natured compromise after Colbert tried to convince his viewers to take over a NASA online naming competition for the at-the-time undesignated Node 3. Even though Colbert won that contest with an overall 230,539 votes, "Tranquility" was eventually chosen by NASA for the module's name. After Colbert raised a ruckus over the slight, facetiously threatening to sue NASA to get his way, famed NASA runner Sunita Williams appeared on Colbert's show, "The Colbert Report." She announced that NASA would keep the name Tranquility, but also announced the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. treadmill, which is now located in the Tranquility module.

The C.O.L.B.E.R.T. represents advancements over the TVIS, which needed a spinning gyro to keep vibrations from the runners' feet from spreading across the station. And while both require a harness to hold the runner down in the zero gravity environment, the C.O.L.B.E.R.T. has a wider running track, much more like on Earth.

Still, C.O.L.B.E.R.T probably wouldn't have been possible without the TVIS. "We've learned a whole lot over the years by having that treadmill and taking data from [the TVIS]," said Williams. "We've learned a whole lot about how much vibration it puts into the structure and what is needed to get the crew member into good shape, and [in the process] finding out a better compromise."