Work trips take Americans away from their polls on Election Day all the time, so we have absentee ballots. Work trips take astronauts a bit beyond the reach of standard absentee ballots, so NASA put together the Space Communication and Navigation Program. As Quartz reports, four astronauts aboard the International Space Station were able to cast their votes thusly:
- Nick Hague, Don Pettit, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore each filled out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot. They fill out an electric ballot.
- That ballot is then encrypted and uploaded "through NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRS) to a ground antenna at the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico," NASA explains.
- From there, the ballot is forwarded via landline to Mission Control in Houston.
- Mission Control then sends the ballot to the astronaut's home county clerk.
Having the technology was particularly clutch for Williams and Wilmore, who launched on June 5 for an alleged one-week mission aboard Boeing's vexatious Starliner and are still cooling their heels in space, notes Space.com. "It's a very important duty that we have as citizens," Williams said during a September call. Also, getting to vote from space, "is pretty cool." (More NASA stories.)
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