Kate Rubins filled out the ballot by mail, it was downlinked and delivered to the clerk’s office
Washington:
At least she didn’t have to stand in line.
An American astronaut voted on Thursday from the International Space Station, making her voice heard in the presidential election when she was 408 kilometers above Earth.
“From the International Space Station: I voted today,” said Kate Rubins, a crew member, who began a six-month stay aboard the orbiting station last week, on the Twitter account of the US space agency NASA.
The post featured a photograph of Rubins, his blond hair floating in the zero gravity environment, in front of a white enclosure with a paper sign reading “the ISS voting booth.”
From the International Space Station: I voted today
– Kate Rubins pic.twitter.com/DRdjwSzXwy
– NASA Astronauts (@NASA_Astronauts) October 22, 2020
Rubins and NASA described the process as a form of postal voting.
A secure electronic ballot generated by a Harris County clerk’s office, home of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, was emailed to the ISS.
Rubins filled out the ballot in the email and it was downlinked and delivered to the clerk’s office.
She is no stranger to the process: Rubins voted from the ISS in the 2016 election. Congress passed a law in 1997 that made it possible to vote from space.
“We consider it an honor to be able to vote from space,” she said in a video before she and two Russian cosmonauts were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, operated by Russia. , October 14.
“If we can do it from space, then I think people can do it from the ground as well.”
Three more US astronauts were also expected to vote from space, but their Oct. 31 trip to the ISS has been delayed.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
