Good morning, Anthony Yanez dropping in with a bonus election day newsletter for the week.
Right now, five Americans are orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station, and they all have the power to vote from space! Much like absentee voting, each astronaut can securely cast their ballot, which is then counted by the county clerk’s office in their home district.
So, how does voting from space work? It’s all thanks to NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Program. Just as data from the space station flows to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center right here in Houston, astronauts’ votes are transmitted through the Near Space Network, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Don Pettit is one of the astronauts on the Space Station. I interviewed him during the total solar eclipse earlier this year. Fun fact -- he is the only person to ever invent and patent something from space. He invented the Zero-G coffee cup so astronauts can drink coffee on the I.S.S. just like they do on Earth.
It’s not a straight transmission:
Just like other Americans away from home, astronauts submit a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot. Once they’ve voted, their ballot is transmitted through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
A quick side note -- if you ever find yourself in southern New Mexico, I highly recommend a visit to White Sands. This striking landscape is composed primarily of gypsum, a mineral that appears white because of how light interacts with the scratched surfaces of its grains as they collide over time.
From New Mexico, NASA securely transfers the astronaut’s ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which then forwards it to the county clerk responsible for casting it. To protect the vote’s integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the county clerk.
Astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997, thanks to a Texas Legislature bill that made it possible. That same year, NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to cast a ballot from orbit, voting from aboard the Mir Space Station.
From outer space to Space City, KPRC 2 will be your home today for complete local and national election coverage on air and online on Click2Houston.com.
