NewsPolitics

Actions

This NASA astronaut voted from space

Posted at 5:05 PM, Nov 07, 2016
and last updated 2016-11-07 17:05:27-05
MOSCOW REGION, RUSSIA - AUGUST 31, 2016: Expedition 49/50 main crew member, austronaut Shane Kimbrough (NASA) in a spacesuit training for the upcoming mission to the International Space Station, at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Zvyozdny Gorodok, Moscow Region. The launch of Expedition 49/50 aboard the Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft to the ISS is scheduled for September 23, 2016. Alexander Shcherbak/TASS (Photo by Alexander ShcherbakTASS via Getty Images)

MOSCOW REGION, RUSSIA – Expedition 49/50 main crew member, austronaut Shane Kimbrough (NASA) in a spacesuit training for the upcoming mission to the International Space Station, at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Zvyozdny Gorodok, Moscow Region. (Photo by Alexander ShcherbakTASS via Getty Images)

From infinity and beyond, he found a way to vote.

Shane Kimbrough, a NASA astronaut currently living on board the International Space Station, filed his ballot in Tuesday’s presidential election, according to a Tumblr post by NASA.

NASA told Yahoo News that Kimbrough filed his ballot in the 2016 election from the space station sometime over the past few days.

For astronauts who will be in space on Election Day, the voting process starts a year before launch. At that time, they are able to select the elections in which they want to participate.

Then, six months before the election, astronauts are provided with the form “Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request — Federal Post Card Application.”

NASA astronaut David Wolf was the first American to vote in space while on the Russian Mir Space Station in a 1997 local election, according to NPR.