MIDDLETON, Wis. -- A Middleton firm is putting together plans for a NASA mission that involves a treadmill named after comedian Stephen Colbert.

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Orbitec in Middleton has been making training simulations for NASA since 2001. Orbitec software will show astronauts how the COLBERT, or Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, works.

"There are so many things that NASA does and there are so many different NASA technologies that actually impact everyone's daily life," said Marty Gustafson, of Orbitec. "The public just doesn't get to hear enough about the really great things that come out of a lot of NASA research."

Gustafson said Orbitec's software will help NASA astronauts put a special treadmill together.

"What we're doing for NASA is putting together a 3-D simulation of all the different assembly procedures," Gustafson said.

The new treadmill is no ordinary device with no ordinary name, WISC-TV reported.

The Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert won a contest to have NASA name a node on the International Space Station after him, but NASA changed its mind. Instead, it offered the COLBERT.

"It is going to take roughly 18 hours for two different astronauts to install it on the International Space Station," Gustafson said.

"In space, you have to be bungeed down to your treadmill. If you tried to run on a normal treadmill, you would just float away," said Abe Megahed, of Orbitec. "Then it was even cooler because we're going to have the chance to fly our software on the Space Station in August, and now the fact that it's the COLBERT makes it triply cool."

The treadmill itself will be made by Houston-based Wyle Labs.