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WASHINGTON, D.C.: Americans from all over the world will vote for
the next US president on November 4, the election day, but few
ballots will travel as far as those cast by two NASA astronauts.
Commander Edward Michael Fincke and Flight
Engineer Gregory Chamitoff are living and working onboard the
International Space Station. Though they are 350 kilometers above
Earth and orbiting at 28,000 kilometers per hour, they will still be
able to participate in the upcoming election, NASA said Monday
(Tuesday in Manila).
NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
A 1997 bill passed by Texas legislators sets up
a technical procedure for astronauts—nearly all of whom live in
Houston—to vote from space.
A secure electronic ballot, generated by the
local county clerk’s office, is uplinked by NASA’s Johnson Space
Center Mission Control Center. An e-mail with crewmember-specific
credentials is sent from the county clerk to the crewmember. These
credentials allow the crewmember to access the secure ballot.
The astronauts will cast their votes and a
secure completed ballot is downlinked and delivered back to the
county clerk’s office by e-mail to be officially recorded.
To highlight their unique voting situation and
to encourage others to exercise their civic duty, Fincke and
Chamitoff sent a special message to Earth.
“We are exercising our Constitutional right
and privilege in casting our ballot this election day,” Fincke
said in the video.
In remarks that aired on NASA television, Fincke
and Chamitoff urged their fellow citizens to take the time to vote:
“If we can do it, so can you.” They ended their message with a
zero-gravity flip.
Joined by Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Yury
Lonchakov, Fincke and Chamitoff also beamed down a message
celebrating the upcoming 10th anniversary of the station’s launch.
-- Xinhua
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