Shuttle launch delayed until Wednesday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- Thunderstorms have forced NASA to call off space shuttle Discovery's launch.

The storms popped up late Monday all around the launch site, and lightning lit up the sky. A lightning strike was reported just five miles from the pad, and then it started to pour. The storms finally eased, but not fast enough. Launch director Pete Nickolenko waited as long as he could before halting the countdown to the early Tuesday liftoff.

NASA will try again early Wednesday to send Discovery to the international space station. The shuttle is loaded with supplies, including a new treadmill named for TV comedian Stephen Colbert.

Discovery and its seven astronauts were set to blast off at 1:36 a.m. Eastern Tuesday morning. They headed out to the launch pad Monday night, waving and smiling, and climbed into the shuttle one by one. The weather worsened as the night wore on.

Discovery's most prominent payload is NASA's new $5 million treadmill, which is named after Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert. He could not attend the launch, but said in a recorded message that he couldn't be prouder that his treadmill soon will be installed at the space station "to help finally slim down all those chubby astronauts."

"Let's face it, being weightless is mostly just a desperate bid to get away from that bathroom scale every morning," Colbert said. "But you guys and gals are ambassadors to the universe. Don't make us look bad. Put down the astronaut ice cream, tubby. Tubby, tubby, two-by-four, couldn't fit through the air lock door."

Colbert campaigned earlier this year to have a space station room named after him. He won the online vote, but NASA went with Tranquility, the name of the dry lunar sea in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 40 years ago this summer. As a consolation prize, Colbert got the treadmill. It's full name is Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill; it will fly up in more than 100 pieces and won't be put together until sometime next month.