Dubbed Robonaut 2 or R2, the 300-pound robot is stowed aboard Discovery, which is set for a final launch this afternoon.

Robonaut will accompany on an 11-day mission that includes the delivery of supplies and spare parts to the . The crew is also slated to undertake scientific experiments during the trip.

"It's difficult to imagine any robot we've shipped in the past being able to some day cook dinner for an astronaut," said Kris Verdeyen, an electrical engineer on NASA's Robonaut project. "Now we can think about something like that. Someday [astronauts] can keep working and say, 'Robonaut, go pop my food in the microwave.'"

Such possibilities are exciting to the engineers charged with getting ready for space flight.

"If you're talking about the evolution of humans and robots working together, these kinds of things now seem possible," added Verdeyen. "It's a big step in the evolution of human/robotic work."