In space, nobody can hear you scheme. On Earth, it turns out, it's a different story.
This week, a 51-year-old woman was sentenced to federal prison for making far-out and ultimately weightless accusations – that her former spouse had illegally accessed her bank account as anastronautaboard theInternational Space Stationin the summer of 2019.
Summer Heather Worden, of Sedgwick County, Kansas, was given three months behind bars with two years of supervised release for making false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations to law enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justicesaid. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett of the Southern District of Texas also ordered her to pay $210,000 in restitution.
International Space Station marks 25 years with humans on board. See photos
Worden pleaded guilty in November 2025.
According to court documents, Worden falsely accused her astronaut ex-wife, Anne McClain, of guessing the password to her bank account and improperly accessing it from the space station while the two were going through a divorce.
An internal investigation ultimately exonerated McClain, whohad deniedthe allegations. Nevertheless, Worden continued to promote the false claim to news outlets and hired a media consultant to amplify it, the documents said. Evidence showed Worden also publicly released McClain's personal information.
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McClain, a decorated NASA astronaut and U.S. Army colonel, was among a crew of three whose Soyuz spacecraft docked at the orbiting research complexin December 2018. As Worden had filed for divorce that same year, it's possible some space was necessary.
The accusations came seven months later, marking the first time anyone had been accused of acrime in space.
However, an investigation revealed Worden's bank account opened in April 2018 and was accessible to McClain until January 2019, when Worden changed her account credentials. Authorities determined Worden had given McClain access to her personal finances as early as 2015.
Worden was allowed to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to a federal prison facility to be determined "in the near future."
NASA's office of inspector general investigated the case.
McClainreturned to the space station in March 2025 as mission commander of a global crew of four who relieved a pair of astronauts forced to stay aboard the orbiting research complexbeyond their expected termafter NASA decided their spacecraft was incapable of making the journey back to Earth.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Astronaut's ex sentenced for false accusations of crime in space