A woman has pleaded guilty to falsely claiming that her ex, who is an astronaut, had committed a crime in space.
In July 2019, Summer Heather Worden, 50, had claimed to police that her ex-wife had illegally accessed her bank account earlier that year while she was deployed on the International Space Station, according to a release from the Department of Justice.
While her former spouse was not named, CBS News claims she was previously identified as astronaut Anne McClain, who was at the ISS from December 2018 to June 2019.
The accusation marked the first allegation of a crime being committed in space and sparked an immediate investigation.
NASA's Office of the Inspector General found during the investigation that Worden had opened the bank account in April 2018 and that both she and McClain had access to it until January 2019, per the Justice Department.
CBS reports that the investigation also found that Worden had regularly given McClain access to her bank records from at lease 2015, including her log in credentials.
According to the New York Times, McClain said in 2019 that she'd accessed the bank account with Worden's permission, but Worden - a former Air Force intelligence officer - had disputed that claim and filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
Worden's family also filed a complaint to NASA's Office of Inspector General alleging that McClain had improperly accessed the account and even accused her of identity theft.
McClain had denied the accusations on social media, saying that she and her former wife had "been going through a painful, personal separation that's now unfortunately in the media."
Her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, added per the New York Times: "She strenuously denies that she did anything improper. [She] is totally cooperating."
Part of the pair's contentious split centered around Worden's son, who was born around a year before the two women met.
According to the New York Times, Worden had not allowed McClain to adopt the child even after their 2014 marriage, but McClain had petitioned a local court in 2018 for shared parenting rights and "the exclusive right to designate the primary residence of the child" if they could not reach a mutual agreement, according to records.
Despite initially claiming McClain had accessed her account from space without her consent, Worden ended up pleading guilty to one count of lying to law enforcement on November 13 and will face sentencing in February 2026.
She faces up to five years in prison and a maximum possible fine of $250,000, and remains on bond pending the hearing.
McClain, meanwhile, returned to the International Space Station in 2025, where she participated in a spacewalk during the mission.
It comes years after she was set to take part in NASA's first all-female spacewalk, which ended up getting delayed at short notice as there were not enough suits available after she requested hers was adjusted to the right size.
The first all-female spacewalk ended up being conducted by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir in October 2019.