Can astronauts vote from space? How the International Space Station becomes a polling place

Those planning to vote on the major presidential primary election day, known as Super Tuesday, are likely heading to their local schools, churches and rec centers to cast their ballots.

But for those living 250 miles above the Earth, it won't be feasible to get to their nearest polling place.

Astronauts with missions aboard the International Space Station are generally gone for about six months – or for one year in the unplanned case of Frank Rubio. Being away from Earth for such a lengthy time means astronauts are at risk of missing some pretty monumental elections.

Thankfully, NASA has had measures in place since the late 1990s to ensure those intrepid spacefarers can still participate in democracy.

Four more astronauts joined the seven people aboard the International Space Station early Tuesday morning. Those 11 will be aboard the space station for a short time until four of the earlier crew members return to Earth in a couple of days.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

NASA Crew-8:Meet the 4 new astronauts at the International Space Station

Americans aboard the space station could conceivably want to vote in this year's elections. Here's how they do it, and how it was made possible.

First astronaut votes from space in 1997

Before the era of the space station, American astronauts weren't away from Earth long enough to lose out on exercising their civic duty.

That changed in 1996 when astronaut John Blaha couldn't vote in that year's presidential race between President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, NPR reported in 2020. At the time, Blaha was serving on Russia's Mir Space Station, a predecessor to the International Space Station.

Because most NASA astronauts live in Houston, Texas lawmakers who heard of Blaha's inability to case a ballot were quick to take action. A year later in 1997, then-Gov. George W. Bush signed the legislature's bill into law, creating a measure within the Texas Administrative Code allowing for early voting from space, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum explained in 2020.

That same year, astronaut David Wolf became the first American to cast a ballot from the old Mir space station – or "vote while you float," as NASA joked.

“It's something that, you know, you might or might not expect it to mean a great deal," Wolf told NPR in 2008. "But when you're so removed from your planet, small things do have a large impact."

Who else has voted from space?

The process hasn’t changed much in the years since.

Mir was decommissioned and de-orbited in 2001 to make way for the International Space Station, which now serves as the polling place for astronauts (they even list their addresses as "low-Earth orbit," according to the Smithsonian.)

Since Wolf pioneered voting from space, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins has also cast a ballot from orbit – twice, in fact. Rubins first voted in the 2016 presidential election from the International Space Station, and next cast her cosmic ballot again in 2020, according to NASA.

How do astronauts cast a ballot on the space station?

For astronauts, the voting process starts a year before launch when they are able to select among the local, state and federal elections in which they'd like to participate.

Six months before the election, astronauts are provided with a standard form not unlike absentee ballots that many Americans use to cast their votes. Once the forms are uplinked to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Mission Control, astronauts use unique credentials to access the ballot, cast their votes and downlink them back to Earth the relevant county clerk's office to be counted, the U.S. space agency explained.

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

The astronauts may not get the coveted "I Voted" sticker, but they can claim something a heck of a lot cooler: Voting in zero gravity sure beats voting from the local community center.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com