American astronauts to cast ballots from the space station
Four American astronauts from low Earth orbit will vote in the U.S. presidential election. They are currently aboard the International Space Station. Two of them were supposed to return to Earth several months ago, but plans have changed.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from NASA launched in June to the International Space Station on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
They were expected to return to Earth roughly a week later, almost five months before the U.S. presidential elections. However, the space agency judged the capsule too risky to bring them home safely and decided that Wilmore and Williams will remain in space until 2025. The two experienced astronauts will cast their votes at a distance of approximately 321 kilometres above the nearest polling station.
Civic duty
In addition to Wilmore and Williams, Don Pettit and Nick Hague are on the Space Station. They all assured that they are committed to fulfilling their civic duty.
Similar to many other things in the unpredictable world of spaceflight, NASA already had a contingency plan for such a scenario. Thanks to special legislation in Texas, astronauts will be able to fulfill their civic duty by absentee voting from low Earth orbit.
Voting from space for nearly 30 years
American astronauts have been able to vote from space for nearly 30 years. In 1997, the Texas legislature passed a bill amending the Election Code to include a "person who meets the eligibility requirements of a voter... but who will be on a spaceflight during the early voting period and on election day."
Later that same year, NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to "vote floating from space" during his four-month mission on the Russian space station Mir.
Special system transmits votes
Votes cast in space are transmitted to Earth in the same way most data is sent between the space station and mission control — via NASA's Near Space Network, a constellation of satellites in space that communicate with antennas on our planet.
