US Election Results 2024: Sunita Williams to cast ballot from ‘250 miles above Earth’. How NASA astronauts vote in space

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams is among four American astronauts currently on the International Space Station who have indicated that they plan to vote in the 2024 US presidential election on Tuesday, November 5. Williams, along with her Starliner colleague Butch Wilmore, is spending extra time in space after her Boeing spacecraft was detected with anomalies and was returned without the two crew members.

The final votes for the US Presidential Election 2024 are being cast on Tuesday, November 5. A close fight is being witnessed between the two candidates – Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Earlier in September, Williams said the voting in space is "pretty cool". She said, "It's a very important duty that we have as citizens and [I'm] looking forward to being able to vote from space which is pretty cool." The Indian-American astronaut said this while speaking with the media for the first time after Starliner's departure from the International Space Station.

In the same press conference, Butch Wilmore had said, “I set down my request for a ballot today." The other two NASA astronauts who planned to vote in space are Nick Hague and Don Pettit.

Sunita Williams and Butch Willmore had launched to space aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5. This Starliner test flight marked the first Boeing spaceflight with astronauts. While Starliner returned to Earth on September 7, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore remain part of the Expedition 72 space station. They await their return on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February 2025.

Is it possible to vote in space?

Yes. NASA astronaut David Wolf was the first American to vote from space while aboard the Mir Space Station in 1997. In the last (2020) US Presidential Elections, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins exercised her right to vote aboard the International Space Station.

But how do you vote when you are ‘250 miles above Earth’ during an election cycle? To cast a ballot in space, astronauts need to fill out an absentee ballot, which is encrypted and then sent to Earth through the Near Space Network.

US ELection Results: Let's take a deep dive into the process

In 1997, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that allowed NASA astronauts to cast ballots from orbit. Here's how the NASA explained the process of casting a vote in space: 

Voting in space is possible through NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Program. The process is similar to most data transmitted between the space station and the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Votes cast in space travel through the agency’s Near Space Network, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The network connects missions within 1.2 million miles of Earth with communications and navigation services – including the space station.

WATCH: Here's a visual representation of the process

Astronauts may fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot. The astronaut then fills out an electronic ballot aboard the orbiting laboratory. The document flows through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

From New Mexico, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot.

To preserve the vote’s integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk.