In space, hundreds of miles above Earth, NASA astronauts on the International Space Station are voting in the 2024 presidential election.
There are four Americans currently aboard the orbiting laboratory, including Don Pettit, Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams.
When they launched to the space station early last summer, Wilmore and Williams never expected to have to vote in zero gravity. They were supposed to return just days after they launched — not months. Wilmore said he had sent his request for a ballot in September.
“It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens,” Williams said in September. She said that getting to vote from space, “is pretty cool.”
Astronauts who expect to be away from Earth during elections can request Federal Post Card Applications to submit absentee ballots or vote early in coordination with their county clerk’s office.
Votes cast in space are transmitted like most data between the space station and Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The data is received using the Near Space Network, which is a network of antenna systems and relay satellites. After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot, the document moves through the agency’s “track and data relay satellite system” to a ground antenna in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
From that facility, NASA transfers the ballot to Mission Control and then to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot.
The ballots are encrypted and can only be accessed by the astronaut and the clerk.
Astronauts have been voting in US elections for nearly 30 years. The Texas legislature passed a bill that allowed NASA astronauts to cast ballots from orbit in 1997.
It’s important to exercise your right to vote – even in space!
— NASA (@NASA) November 5, 2024
In our latest episode of "Houston We Have a Podcast," we explain how @NASA_Astronauts vote from the @Space_Station: https://t.co/zYPty9Rrkh pic.twitter.com/UDSUOYyN5c
NASA astronaut David Wolf was the first American to vote from space aboard Russia’s Mir Space Station, which was operated from 1986 to 2001. And, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins was the latest astronaut to vote in a presidential election in November 2020.
