That's just three short months from now.

What's up, everyone?

I'm Chris James filling in for Carla zoos who's on a well deserved vacation this week and, rest assured, CNN tends, Fearless Leader will be back soon.

In the meantime, I'm super excited to be here.

Let me get you up to speed.

The incumbent president, of course, is Donald Trump, a Republican, and he's going up against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

I say presumptive because he hasn't officially been nominated yet.

That will happen during the Democratic National Convention, which takes place the week of August 17th in Milwaukee by then, and Trump will be going head to head on November 3rd.

Trump was elected president in 2016 after defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

He took office in January of 2017.

Biden, meanwhile, has had a long career in government, starting in 1973 as a senator and ultimately serving as Barack Obama's vice president from 2009 till 2017.

Now, before you make a decision one way or the other on November 3rd, you can check your registration status or registered to vote at vote dot orig on.

Check out this explainer on everything else you need to know before you cast your ballot.

Campaigning, fundraising debates, more fundraising to conventions, more debates and finally, the vote.

Three U.

S presidential election happens every four years on the first Tuesday in November, but Election Day is really just the last step in a years long process.

It starts with the primary when states vote on who should be the nominee for each political party.

There are two major political parties that most Americans identify with the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party is considered to be on the right of the political spectrum, supporting positions considered more conservative while the Democrats fall on the left supporting positions considered more liberal.

Every summer before the election, the two parties hold week long events called conventions, to officially select their nominee.

Each state will send delegates to the conventions who act as representatives of the results from the primaries.

50 votes for Secretary Clinton and nine votes for Senator Sanders, three candidate who wins the majority of those delegates that accepts the nomination.

Even the sitting president has to be renominated by their party.

Congratulations, Dad.

We love you.

But if he or she has already served two terms, they can't run again.

Once the nominees are secured, it's on to the general election.

Although the nominees may attack each other as a campaign, they won't actually face off until the debates a month before the election.

When it's finally time to vote, there are three ways to do it by mail in ballot.

For those who can't make it to the polls by early voting, which happens days or weeks before Election Day and by going to the polls on Election Day historically Onley about 50 to 60% of eligible Americans actually turn out to vote in the United States.

The candidate with the majority of the votes doesn't automatically win.

The U.

S uses a system called the Electoral College, which gives each state a certain amount of electoral votes.

Theory.

Amount of electoral votes the state gets is determined by how many representatives they have in Congress.

If a candidate gets the most votes in a state, they get the electoral votes for that state, except in Nebraska and Maine, where they are awarded based on a statewide and district results.

You need 270 out of 538 electoral votes to become president.

Some states have historically voted Republican in our called red states.

Others have historically voted Democratic in our called blue states.

Some states are swing states, which means voters have swung between Democrats and Republicans, depending on the election year.

In a normal year, if the election is a landslide, the results could get called shortly after polling stations closed in the evening.

Thank you, but if it's close, candidates won't give their victory or concession speeches until the wee hours of the morning.

If it's super close, candidates can request a recount in certain states.

In 2000, George Bush won the state of Florida by just about 1700 votes.

After a recount, it was only 327 and ultimately the Supreme Court had to weigh in to certify the results.

Because of covert 19.

Mail in voting is expected to increase, and states are facing challenges like shortages of poll workers.

It may take some states days or weeks to finalize their results after all of that the winner is sworn in the following January, and almost immediately people start preparing for the next election.

Mhm.

All right, y'all, time for some 12th trivia.

Which of these was the last mission to have men on the moon?

Apollo 11 Apollo 13 Apollo 17 or Apollo 19 Apollo 17.

It is on as part of that mission in December 1972 astronaut Gene Kernan was the last man to walk on the moon.

Good news.

There are plans for the United States to return to the moon.

NASA says they plan to return by 2024 Space six has announced they'd like to go to the moon by 2022.

And speaking of space six, remember two months ago when the Space six crew dragon launched astronauts into space?

It was the first time a commercially produced rocket took off from American soil carrying American astronauts.

President Trump was on hand for the historic occasion.

Well, after two months aboard the International Space station, the astronauts made their safe return on Sunday.

Rachel Crane has more NASA astronauts Bob Banking and Doug Hurley, making history with crew Dragon successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola.

After a two month stay at the International Space Station and a 19 hour journey home.

Recovery boats were waiting near by to attend to the astronauts and the spacecraft after the capsule parachuted into the ocean at around 15 MPH, a far cry from the 17,500 MPH it was traveling at just before re entering Earth's atmosphere.

The astronauts then making their way to Johnson Space Center, where they were united their families and underwent a medical assessments.

The successful returning Space X has indeed made history becoming the first private company put NASA astronauts into orbit and safely bring them home and finally returning US human spaceflight to American soil after the retirement of the shuttle program nine long years ago.

Now this technically was a test mission intended to certify Space X's crew Dragon spacecraft, her future operational missions, which could start flying as soon as two months from now.

This is all part of a multibillion dollar contracts Basics has with NASA to regularly run such missions, ushering in a new era of space Flight one where private companies are the ones task preparing people to low earth orbit.

And NASA is just the customer back to you.

In the famous words of Indiana Jones snakes.

Why did it have to be snakes?

Some people love them.

Some people hate him personally.

I'm not a fan, and I'm really not a fan of invasive species.

Those, of course, are the certain species that don't normally exist in an ecosystem and kill other animals.

Take, for example, the get this 5000 Burmese pythons the state of Florida just removed from the Everglades.

Burmese pythons are not native to Florida and routinely wreak havoc on the animals in the ecosystem.

There, alligator Ron Bergeron, a member of the South Florida Water Management District.

Also what a name, said that quote each invasive python eliminated represents hundreds of native Florida wildlife saved.

Our next animal is out of this world, literally.

Also, it's not really an animal, but it's being called a space butterfly.

Check this out.

What you're looking at is thousands of light years away.

It's a planetary nebula, a giant cloud of gas that forms around an ancient star that hasn't yet exploded.

The European Space Agency, using their very large telescope in Chile.

Yes.

That's its real name.

They captured these incredible images.

Space men, space butterflies, pythons, elections.

I'd say this episode of CNN 10 had it all.

Tune in tomorrow to see what else we have in store for you.

Thanks again to Carl for letting me fill in.

I'm Chris James.

See you later.

Mhm.