Kate Rubins, a NASA astronaut, plans to vote in the November election while she is in space. Rubins became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched on a Soyuz spacecraft in July 2016. On October 14th, Kate Rubins, along with the rest of her crew, will launch into space on Expedition 64. Since she will be in space until spring of next year, Rubins will have to vote from the International Space Station.

Voting from space has only recently become a real issue because space missions usually did not last more than a few weeks. In the past years, astronauts have extended the amount of time they stay in space.

In 1997, Texas approved a law to enable astronauts to vote from space. Most astronauts reside in Texas because NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is located nearby in Houston. The astronauts know the importance of voting and want to make sure that theirs count. David Wolf, who was aboard the Russian space station Mir, became the first astronaut to vote from space that same year. Wolf told The Atlantic, “I voted alone up in space, very alone, the only English speaker up there, and it was nice to have an English ballot, something from America,”.

Kate Rubins mentioned to The Associated Press, “I think it’s really important for everybody to vote. If we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground, too,”. Astronauts had to pass a law so that they could vote in space, and Rubins believes that if astronauts can send their ballots from 200 miles above their polling areas, then every other American citizen can also cast their votes.

This year’s election is not the first time that Kate Rubins will participate from space. In 2016, Rubins sent her ballot electronically to Earth. Another astronaut to vote from space was Leroy Chiao, who was aboard Expedition 10 at the time of the election. In 2004, he became the first person to vote from space in a presidential election.

The voting process for astronauts begins a year in advance. This is when they select the elections that they will partake in while they are in space. Once they are on the International Space Station, the voters receive access to their ballots through their emails from Mission Control as JSC. Then, they cast their votes and send them back down to JSC. Once their votes reach Earth, they are sent to the county clerk to be counted.