Sunita Williams, stuck in space, will still cast her vote in the US elections. Here’s how

While millions of Americans head to polling booths to cast their votes for the 2024 US elections, a few of their fellow countrymen will also be exercising their right to vote but not on this planet.

To ensure that nobody is left behind, NASA instituted a plan that allows astronauts to perform their civic duty even when they are in space. Reports suggest that four Americans are currently in space who would want to exercise their voting rights, including the two Boeing Starliner astronauts -- Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore -- who are stuck in space till February.

Indian-origin space veteran Williams had shared her enthusiasm for voting in space in a conference in September after she was originally supposed to be back to Earth in time to vote in person. "It's a very important duty that we have as citizens, and [I am] looking forward to being able to vote from space, which is pretty cool," she said.

Her partner Wilmore said he was excited to exercise his voting rights. "It's a very important role that we all play as citizens, to be included in those elections, and NASA makes it very easy for us to do that," he said.

How astronauts vote in space

NASA facilitates a voting process that is similar to absentee ballots which is a vote cast by someone who is unable to go to the allocated polling station. The votes are transmitted between the space station and the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas across 1.2 million miles.

Astronauts fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot and fill an electronic ballot in space. The document is then sent through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a giant antenna at the agency’s test facility in New Mexico.

From there, NASA transmits the ballot to the Mission Control Center which passes on the vote to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To ensure privacy, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible to the astronaut and the clerk casting the ballot.

David Wolf was the first to vote in space in 1997 and Kate Rubins was the last astronaut to vote from the International Space Station during the 2020 US elections, according to NASA.

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