She voted ... from space!
Like 47 million Americans, Kate Rubins voted early in the November 3 election. But the astronaut is the only one to have used a space urn.
"On board the International Space Station: I voted today," she captioned a photo posted Thursday on NASA's Twitter account.
From the International Space Station: I voted today
- Kate Rubins pic.twitter.com/DRdjwSzXwy
- NASA Astronauts (@NASA_Astronauts) October 22, 2020
Hair floating in weightlessness, the 42-year-old astronaut poses in front of a handwritten sign reading "ISS polling station," where she arrived in mid-October.
In the absence of a voting booth and paper ballots, she actually voted through an encrypted email, transmitted to an election officer on Earth.
Three other American astronauts were due to do the same, but their mission, scheduled for October 31, has been postponed and they will be on Earth on election day.
The rules for voting in the United States vary from state to state, but in Texas, where American astronauts are based, a law was passed in 1997 to explicitly provide for the procedure for voting from space.
Several astronauts have already used it, starting with Kate Rubins who was already in the stars during the 2016 election.
In a video message recorded before her departure, she considers "essential to participate in American democracy". “It's important that everyone votes,” she continues. “If we get there from space, I think people can get there from below as well. "
