What Happened
Election Day reached beyond Earth as three NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm elections. According to Mashable, astronaut Anil Menon shared a video on X showing his orbital voting setup inside the same small compartment where he sleeps on Tuesday, November 3. Alongside Menon, fellow astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney also participated in the voting process from orbit.
The Voting Process and Technology
According to NASA, astronauts request an absentee ballot using a Federal Post Card Application, much like other Americans away from home. Astronauts typically make their homes in Texas to remain close to training facilities at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Once completed aboard the station, the electronic ballot travels through NASA's Near Space Network, which is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and handles communications for missions within 1.2 million miles of Earth. The data passes through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there, the ballot moves to Mission Control in Houston before finally reaching the appropriate county clerk.
To ensure security and privacy, the transmission is encrypted so that only the astronaut and the respective county clerk can access the ballot, as reported by Mashable and NASA.
Background
Voting from orbit is not a new procedure. Texas lawmakers cleared the path for orbital voting in 1997 by passing a bill that enabled NASA astronauts to cast ballots from space. That same year, astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote from space while stationed aboard Russia's Mir space station.