NASA Crew Members Vote in Midterms From Space

Three NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station cast ballots in the U.S. midterm elections on November 3. Anil Menon said he, Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins completed electronic ballots while living on the orbiting laboratory.

Menon used a computer in his private room on the station to fill out the ballot and route it to Harris County, Texas, election officials. The county is home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where most NASA astronauts register to vote.

The ballots travel from the station through NASA’s satellite communications network to a ground antenna in New Mexico. NASA then sends them to Johnson Space Center and on to the relevant county clerk. The ballots are encrypted and can be accessed only by the astronaut and the clerk, NASA has explained.

Since Texas authorized the practice in 1997, U.S. astronauts have been able to cast ballots while in space. David Wolf became the first to do so that year, voting while aboard Russia’s Mir space station. The International Space Station’s first crew arrived in 2000.

Delaney and Watkins reached the station on October 1 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-13 mission. Menon arrived on July 15 on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The three Americans share the station with four other crew members: Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk, alongside Russian cosmonauts Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Teteryatnikov.