An American flag is visible in the windows of the cupola aboard the International Space Station. Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators in 1997 that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts – nearly all of whom live in Texas – they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible by the astronaut and the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. (Photo by NASA)

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, Expedition 40 flight engineer, attired in a Russian Orlan spacesuit, participates in a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) in support of science and maintenance on the International Space Station on August 18, 2014. During the five-hour, 11-minute spacewalk, Skvortsov and cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev (out of frame) deployed a small science satellite, retrieved and installed experiment packages and inspected components on the exterior of the orbital laboratory. (Photo by NASA)

SpaceX and NASA Launch of the PACE spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Brevard County, Florida on February 8, 2024. Photo shows launch and booster landing back at CCSFS about 7 minutes 30 seconds after launch. In the foreground is one the new modular lifeguard stands at Minuteman Causeway, replacing the old wooden tower. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via USA Today Network)

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli looks on after landing back on Earth from their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on May 24, 2011 in Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The mission of the Soyuz TMA-20 was launched last December to the International Space Station with the flight engineers Catherine Coleman from the United States, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. The next expedition is expected to launch this June. (Photo by Stephane Corvaja/ESA via Getty Images)

Crowds wave as HMS Daring, the largest and most powerful destroyer warship ever built for the Royal Navy, leaves Portsmouth Harbour on January 11, 2012 in Portsmouth, England. HMS Daring, the first of six new Type 45 destroyers embarked from Portsmouth on its maiden deployment, a seven-month mission to the Middle East. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft with crew members of Expedition 59/60 Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague lifts off from the launch pad at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 15 March 2019. Hague, Koch, and Ovchinin will spend six-and-a-half months living and working aboard the International Space Station. (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/EFE)

This image is NGC 6543 known as the Cat's Eye Nebula as it appears to the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Telescope. A planetary nebula is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now, when it expands to become a red giant and then sheds most of its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that contracts to form a dense white dwarf star. This image was released October 10, 2012. (Photo by J. Kastner/NASA/CXC/RIT)

A woman holds up the Chinese national flag as people gather to watch the the launch of the Long March 5B rocket carrying China's Tianhe space station core module from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, China, 29 April 2021. China launched into space the core module of its space station, marking the beginning of a series of launch missions to complete the space station by the end of next year. (Photo by Matjaz Tancic/EPA/EFE)