How do American astronauts vote from space?

NASA astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are also voting in the 2024 presidential election.

There are currently four Americans aboard the orbiting laboratory: 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 only days after launch, not months. Wilmore said he had submitted his voting request in September.

“It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens,” Williams said in September during a press conference from the ISS, adding that being able to vote from space “is pretty cool.”

According to NASA, astronauts who expect to be away from Earth during the election can request federal postcards 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 the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Data is received through the Near Space Networkwhich is a network of antenna systems and relay satellites. After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot, the document moves through the agency’s “data relay and tracking satellite system” to a ground antenna in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

From that facility, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center and then to the county clerk responsible for casting the vote.

The ballots are encrypted and only the astronaut and the clerk can access them.

Astronauts have been voting in American elections for almost 30 years. The Texas legislature passed a bill allowing NASA astronauts to cast their votes from orbit in 1997.

NASA astronaut David Wolf He was the first American to vote from space aboard Russia’s Mir Space Station, which operated from 1986 to 2001.

Keep reading:
– Why some states will take longer to count presidential election votes.
– With massive and historic early voting, Georgia captures electoral attention.