US Presidential Election: How will astronauts on the International Space Station cast their votes?

In America, voting will be held on November 5 to elect the country's new president.

While most of the people in America will cast their vote on November 5, a large number of people have cast their vote in advance and some have also filled their ballots by mail and sent them to the relevant authority.

But will American astronauts on the International Space Station, hundreds of miles above Earth, cast their votes in this presidential election?

The answer to this question is 'yes', US astronauts will also cast their votes in the presidential elections, and this will not be the first time, but astronauts have already cast their votes from the space station.Since 1997, the United States has had a procedure for astronauts to cast their votes from space, and since 2004, American astronauts on the International Space Station have cast their votes in all US presidential elections.

This could not be done in the elections held in 2012 because at that time the astronauts on the space station had cast their votes before their departure taking advantage of the early voting facility.

The method of casting votes from space is much more complicated than the usual electronic voting.

Communication between the space station and NASA is through the Near Space Network, and astronauts' electronic belts also pass through it.

Astronauts fill out their electronic ballots aboard the International Space Station, which are encrypted by NASA and fed into the space station's computers.This computer transmits the belt via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) to NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. From New Mexico, these belts are sent to NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

Mission control sends the ballot electronically to the astronaut's county clerk's office. No one else can see the ballot except the teller and their county clerk's office.It should be noted that the 4 American astronauts currently in the International Space Station include Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who went to the space station on an 8-day mission in June, but are still stuck there due to a malfunction in their Boeing Starliner spacecraft are.