NASA astronaut Anne McClain is helped out of the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship SHANNON after she, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov landed in the Pacific Ocean on August 9, 2025 off the coast of San Diego, California.
Nasa | Getty Images
A former Air Force intelligence officer has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday.
The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce.
The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden’s then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilization and carried by a surrogate.
Worden’s trial in the case was scheduled to begin next Monday in Houston federal court.
The Kansas resident was accused of making false statements about McClain to NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the Federal Trade Commission, where she alleged that McCain had committed identity theft.
Worden in July “alleged her estranged spouse had guessed the password and illegally accessed her bank account while the spouse was deployed to the International Space Station,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement headlined “Far Out” on Friday.
“However, Worden had actually opened the account in April 2018,” the office said. “Both parties had accessed it until January 2019 when Worden changed the credentials.”
“The investigation revealed Worden had granted her spouse access to her bank records from at least 2015, including her login credentials,” the statement said.
At the time of the alleged illegal access, McClain was preparing for what NASA billed as the first all-female space walk, which was later scrapped because the agency did not have enough spacesuits to fit the astronauts.
McClain’s attorney told The New York Times in 2019 that she had checked the account to monitor the family’s finances, and that she had never been told by Worden that she could not have access to the account.
McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019.
She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August.
Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 12.
She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.
CNBC has requested comment from attorneys for Worden and McClain.