NASA uses electronic encryption to protect astronauts’ grades as they are sent back to Mission Control in Houston. Credit: NASA
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) orbit the Earth hundreds of miles above American soil. But that doesn’t mean they can’t vote while floating.
Indeed, Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – who have been at the orbital laboratory since June after their test mission was extended for safety reasons – have said they plan to vote from orbit in the US presidential election of November. They’re not the first to do this and they probably won’t be the last.
NASA astronaut David Wolf, aboard the now-defunct Mir space station, was the first American to vote from the final frontier. Wolf voted in Houston’s local elections after the Texas Legislature, which oversees NASA’s Johnson Space Center, passed a bill allowing electronic voting in space.
Since 2004, ISS occupants have voted in every presidential election except one: in 2012, when Williams and crewmate Kevin Ford submitted absentee ballots before launching to the orbital laboratory. Most recently, ISS astronaut Kate Rubins voted in the 2020 race. Astronauts living outside of Texas, meanwhile, voted in coordination with their local voter services department.
“It is a very important duty that we have as citizens and [I am] I’m looking forward to being able to vote from space, which is really cool,” Williams told reporters at a NASA press conference in September.
So, how do they do it? The process is actually quite simple.
Like other data transmitted between the ISS and NASA mission control in Houston, astronaut votes are sent through the agency’s Near Space Network, which handles communications in low Earth orbit.
After requesting an absentee ballot, astronauts fill it out electronically aboard the space station. NASA then encrypts and uploads the data to an onboard computer, which feeds it through the agency’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). Only the astronaut and the county clerk’s office can view the selections.
The TDRSS transmits ballots to a terminal at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. From there, landlines transmit them to Mission Control in Houston, where they are sent electronically to the county clerk’s office for storage.
“Astronauts forgo many of the comforts afforded to those on Earth as they undertake their journeys into space for the benefit of humanity,” NASA said in a blog post earlier this month. “Although they are far from home, NASA networks connect them with their friends and family and give them the opportunity to participate in democracy and society while in orbit.”
In March, NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli, part of the ISS Expedition 70 crew, voted from the orbital laboratory as Texas residents. Accompanying Wilmore and Williams on the ISS are crews from the Soyuz MS-26 and SpaceX Crew-9 missions, including two Americans who can also vote from space.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on FLY.
