Now here's some news to make the inner Trekkie in all of us feel all tingly and excited.

The space shuttle Discovery embarked on its final flight yesterday after 27 years in service. And what better way for the crew to start the day than by being woken up by a message from Captain Kirk?

A specially recorded message from James T. Kirk himself, William Shatner, replaced the music traditionally played to wake up the shuttle's crew on their last day at the International Space Station.

To the backing of that theme tune (all together now), the message began: "Space ... the final frontier ..."

If the much-delayed launch of the space shuttle Discovery does indeed happen tonight (at 11:59PM ET) , the astronauts are going to be wearing patches, like they always do. But this time the COLBERT treadmill is on the shuttle so the crew is going to be wearing the patch to the right. Is that cool or what? How do we get one?

It's no secret that the hyperactive Rachael Ray has her hands in a little bit of everything. She has a number of hit shows on the Food Network, a daily talk show, numerous cookbooks, her own magazine, and a upcoming CD of holiday music (not sung by her, just chosen by her). Now, she is taking her on her biggest challenge: outer space.

No, she's not launching her own line of spaceships (although, powered by her own energy, those craft could probably get to Mars in two weeks). What she is doing is having her meals taste tested on the next space shuttle mission, which will hopefully be launching this evening if everything goes as planned. Yessir, the crew of the Discovery will be testing out three of Rachael's signature dishes. And there's a pretty good guarantee that one of them (or all of them) will contain some EVOO as an ingredient (that's Extra Virgin Olive Oil to the rest of you).

Rachael Ray is not the first TV chef to have her meals adapted for space flight. Emeril Lagasse has had a number of items on the menus of both the space shuttle and the International Space Station. In fact, according to Dr. Michele Perchonok, manager of NASA's Space Foods System Laboratory, Emeril's spicy green beans and rice pudding adapted quite well to zero gravity conditions. I wonder if one of Rachael's stoups (not quite stew, and not quite soup) will fare as well.