Space to Ground: Voting from Space: Nov. 01,2024

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Welcome to space to ground, I’m chelsey ballarte. Election day in the united states is coming up on november 5th, and americans are hitting the polls. We know that absentee ballots allow people to vote when they’re out of their home state, but what happens when you’re 250 miles above the earth during an election cycle? In 1997, astronaut david wolf became the first american to vote in space while he was aboard the mir space station, and astronauts have exercised their right to vote ever since. Today, all four american astronauts currently on the space station have indicated that they plan to vote in the 2024 presidental election.

The process is quite simple. The astronaut fills out a federal post card application to request an absentee ballot. Once approved, they are set up to vote in space. The encrypted ballots are sent to the astronaut’s secure on-orbit email account. The astronaut casts their vote, and the ballots are transmitted to a nasa tracking and data relay satellite.

From there, the ballots are relayed down to the agency’s white sands test facility in new mexico, and then routed to mission control in houston. The final step is to deliver the ballots to the county voting clerk in the county where they live. Nasa astronauts jasmin moghbeli and loral o’hara also voted in the primaries back in march. And kate rubins even made her own makeshift voting booth during the 2020 election. It was her second time voting in space.

The space station crew got to celebrate halloween last week. Holidays aboard the space station look a little differently than they do here on earth, but the crew still took the time to join in on the fun. Nasa astronaut don pettit shows off his jack-o-lantern costume. Pettit is known for being an inventor, so of course, his costume even lights up. October 31st actually has a special meaning besides halloween.

It’s the day that expedition 1 launched back in in the year 2000. It was the international space station’s first long-duration mission and it kicked off a continuous human presence aboard the space station when the crew arrived on november 2nd. That means that for the past 24 years, the space station has always had people onboard. The crew of three spent four months installing life support and communication systems and continuing the station’s assembly. Nasa’s spacex crew-8 mission splashed down back on earth, concluding their 235-day mission, and all four of the crewmembers are doing well.

This means that there’s an open parking spot available at the zenith port of the space station’s harmony module. Next week, crew-9 is going to get their suits on, climb into their spacex dragon spacecraft, and move their spacecraft, effectively taking crew-8’s old parking spot. By relocating their spacecraft, it makes room for an upcoming cargo spacecraft to dock next week. You can follow along with the port relocation live on nasa+. Our coverage begins at 6:15 a.

m. Eastern standard time on sunday, and the dragon spacecraft will undock just 20 minutes later. It’ll travel to its new port and is expected to dock again at 7:18 a. m. That’s it for space to ground this week, thanks for watching.

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