How astronauts vote from space

Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore plan to vote from the International Space Station. They are among four American astronauts aboard the outpost who may want to do so.

Astronauts have been voting in U.S. elections since 1997, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing NASA astronauts to cast ballots from orbit.
Like any other voter, astronauts can fill out an application to request an absentee ballot and will be given an electronic form.
Ballots completed in space are then sent to Earth in the same way that most data is sent from the space station to mission control.

Just as millions of Americans who haven’t yet voted early are doing so are preparing to head to their local polling places on Tuesdaya select few will be cast their votes from 250 miles above the earth.

Just because a handful of American astronauts can’t go to their local schools, churches and recreation centers to vote the 2024 presidential elections doesn’t mean they still can’t make their voices heard. That’s because NASA has been developing a plan for almost twenty years that will allow astronauts to fulfill their civic duties entirely from space.

Ahead of the November 5 elections four Americans are in space who might want to vote. That includes the two Boeing Starliner astronauts who originally thought they would make it back to Earth in time to vote in person before their spacecraft did sent home without them.

The process for voting from the International Space Station may sound familiar to absentee voters, but it is of course a bit more complicated. If NASA explainsIn orbit voting, encrypted ballots are sent from satellites to a ground antenna before being received by county clerks for counting.

Here’s everything you need to know about how astronauts vote from space:

Who on the International Space Station might want to vote for the president?

On September 30, American astronaut Nick Haag and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived were the most recent astronauts to achieve the International Space Stationwho joins Expedition 72.

Of the seven people aboard the orbital outpost, The Hague is now one of four Americans who will be in space during the elections, including Don Pettit, who arrived in September with two cosmonautsand Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.

A few months ago, Williams and Wilmore expressed their intention to vote from space.

“It’s a very important role that we all play as citizens to be involved in those elections, and NASA makes it very easy for us to do that,” Wilmore told reporters. during a September 13 press conference of the space station.

Added Williams: “I’m looking forward to being able to vote from space, which is pretty cool.”

Williams and Wilmore They were scheduled to be on the space station for just 10 days when they arrived in June as part of the first crewed test flight for the Boeing Starliner, which NASA hopes to put into service for regular orbital travel. But now that NASA has returned the Starliner empty to Earth after deeming the vehicle unsafe for a crew, Wilmore and Williams will instead return in February on a SpaceX dragon with The Hague and Gorbunov.

First astronaut voices from space in 1997

Before the space station era, American astronauts were not away from Earth long enough to miss the performance of their civic duty.

That changed in 1996 when astronaut John Blaha was unable to vote in that year’s presidential race between President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. NPR reported in 2020. At the time, Blaha served on Russia’s Mir space station, a predecessor to the International Space Station.

Because most NASA astronauts live in Houston, Texas lawmakers, hearing of Blaha’s inability to secure a vote, quickly acted. A year later, in 1997, the then government decided. George W. Bush signed the bill into law into law, creating a measure within the Texas Administrative Code that allows early voting from space, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum explained in 2020.

That same year, astronaut David Wolf became the first American to cast a vote from the old Mir space station – or “voice while you float,” NASA joked.

“It’s something that you may or may not expect to mean a lot,” Wolf said NPR in 2008. “But when you’re so far away from your planet, little things have a big impact.”

Who else voted from space?

The process has not changed much in recent years.

Mir was decommissioned and deorbited in 2001 to make way for the International Space Station, which now serves as a polling place for astronauts (they even list their addresses as “low Earth orbit,” according to the Smithsonian.)

Since Wolf pioneered voting from space, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins has also cast a vote from space – twice in fact. Rubins first voted in the 2016 presidential election from the International Space Station, then cast her cosmic vote again in 2020. according to NASA.

NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli also voted like Texas residents from the space station in March, filling out electronic absentee ballots.

How do astronauts vote on the space station?

Like any other voter, astronauts can fill out an application to request an absentee ballot and will be provided with an electronic form that could be recognizable to all Americans who cast their votes that way.

Once the forms are forwarded to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Mission Control, astronauts will use unique login credentials to access the ballot and cast their vote from the space station, NASA said.

Ballots filled out in space are then beamed to Earth in the same way most data is sent from the space station to mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Votes cast in space travel through NASA’s Near space networka fleet of antenna systems and relay satellites that provide communications and navigation services to the space station.

After the ballots are encrypted and uploaded to the space station’s onboard computer system, they are routed via a tracking and data relay satellite to a ground antenna at the NASA White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The space agency then transfers the ballots to mission control in Houston, which passes them on to the county clerks responsible for processing them.

The astronauts may not get the coveted “I Voted” sticker, but they can claim something much cooler: voting in zero gravity is better than voting from the local community center.

One version of this story was last published on March 5.

Eric Lagatta covers the latest and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]