With Election Day on the visible horizon , many Americans are making plan to vote — but some of those votes will have to travel an terribly long way . For the NASA astronauts on panel the International Space Station ( ISS ) , they have to make plans to vagabond their ballots from 250 nautical mile above the Earth ’s control surface , where they are revolve in distance .

Fortunately , there is a scheme in home to make certain that astronauts get their say in democracy , though they do have to satisfy out an absentee ballot as there are n’t any polling stations nearby . Astronauts like NASA ’s Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli , shown above , voted in the Texas primary in march this class , using an electronic system that conveys their votes from the electronic voting they fill in to Mission Control at NASA ’s Johnson Space Center in Houston , which sends them on to the county salesclerk ’s office .

Though it might sound like a hassle , astronaut have expressed their excitation at getting to vote from space . When NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams found out that they would be stay on the ISS longer than originally design due toissues with the Boeing Starlinerspacecraft they travel to the ISS on , they enjoin that voting from place would be a particular experience .

“ It ’s a very important duty that we have as citizens and I ’m look frontward to being capable to vote from space , which is pretty cool , ” Williams said in a press conference when the conclusion was announced . “ I sent down my petition for a vote today , ” Wilmore said at the clock time . “ It ’s a very of import role that we all recreate as citizen , to be include in those election , and NASA have it very easy for us to do that . ”

Astronaut ballot has been in place since the recent 1990s , and started when NASA astronaut John Blaha , who was ground on the Mir place station , said he wanted to vote , but there was no unafraid way for him to do so . A system of rules was set up the next year , in junction with the Texas state legislature , and David Wolf became the first U.S. astronaut to vote from space in 1997 .

There are some complexities to the process , though . Marta Durham , the Daily Operations and Crew Support teacher at NASA , explainedthat absentee ballot must be hand - sign on , not electronically signed , so they usually endeavor to get ballots sign before spaceman provide Earth . But with the case of Wilmore and Williams , because they are stay on longer than require , they call for to print out the ballots in space , sign them , and then scan their signatures . And the problem with that is that scanner use drinking glass , and glass is not allowed on the ISS for safe reasons .

In the end , Durham did some experimenting and find that the iPads that the astronauts use on the station have cameras which work out well enough as scanner — and the only challenge with that was getting the opus of newspaper to lie in flat without gravity . But it was all wangle in the final stage , so both Wilmore and Williams were able to cast their votes .