American astronaut Anil Menon has voted in the US midterm elections from the International Space Station, roughly 400 kilometres above Earth, and he shared the moment with the public on social media.

In a post dated November 3, 2026, Menon wrote:

“Yes, you can even vote from space! All three US crew members had the privilege of voting from space station. We filled out an electronic ballot and sent it securely to the election officials.”

Menon said that he and his fellow crew members got to take part in the vote, and he described the experience as special. He is one of three American crew members on the station who cast ballots. Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney also voted from orbit. Both arrived at the station last month aboard a SpaceX rocket.

Menon himself reached the station in July, launching on the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft operated by the Russian space agency Roscosmos. In his video, he showed that his living quarters on the ISS double as a voting booth. A computer in his room was all he needed to fill out the electronic form.

The ballot was sent to Harris County, in the US state of Texas. That is where NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is located, which makes the county a natural home for astronaut votes.

How an astronaut gets a ballot

Voting from orbit is not an improvised workaround. The United States already has a system for citizens who are away from home or their voting district on election day. That group includes Americans living overseas and astronauts.

The first step is the Federal Post Card Application, known as the FPCA. Through this form, voters can request an absentee ballot from their election officials. Once the request is approved, they get access to an electronic ballot. Astronauts follow the same route. They fill in the electronic ballot on a computer on the ISS.

The harder question is how a vote written in orbit reaches the ground. According to NASA, the completed electronic ballot first travels through the agency’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system. From there, it reaches a ground antenna at a NASA test facility.

The vote then moves on to Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. From Houston, it is delivered to the county clerk responsible for that voter. The clerk is the official who handles the ballot and makes sure it is counted in the election.

Secrecy and security in orbit

Ballot secrecy is built into the process. The electronic ballot is encrypted, meaning it is wrapped in a digital security layer. Only the astronaut who cast the vote and the county clerk can access it.

The idea that a ballot can travel through space and still stay private is what makes the process work. The system depends on satellites, ground antennas, mission control staff and election officials all handling the same file without exposing its contents.

A tradition that dates back to 1997

Astronauts voting from orbit is not new. American astronauts have been casting votes from space since 1997. That year, the Texas Legislature passed a law that allowed NASA astronauts in Earth orbit to vote in US elections.

The first American to vote from space was David Wolf. He cast his ballot while living aboard Russia’s Mir space station. In a 2016 interview, Wolf recalled that he was voting alone. No other English speaker was around him on the station.

Receiving a US ballot and filling it out, he said, made him feel connected to his country. Wolf described the moment as a reminder that people on the ground still cared about him, even though he was hundreds of kilometres away.

Why it matters beyond the novelty

The story is easy to share because it sounds like science fiction. Yet it also makes a simple point about democracy. In the United States, the right to vote does not depend on where a citizen is on election day. If a citizen is in orbit, a route to the ballot box still exists.

For readers following the midterms, the astronaut vote is a reminder that even the most unusual voters are included in the system. Participation in democracy does not require being on the ground.