SpaceX capsule carrying ISS astronauts falls into the air
A crew of four astronauts returned to Earth after departing the International Space Station in NASA’s first ever medical evacuation due to an undisclosed illness involving one of the crew members.
bloomberg – technology
No one in space can hear your plans. On Earth, the story turned out to be different.
This week, a 51-year-old woman was sentenced to federal prison for overreaching and ultimately gravity-defying accusations that her ex-spouse illegally accessed her bank account while she was an astronaut on the International Space Station in the summer of 2019.
Summer Heather Worden, of Sedgwick County, Kansas, was sentenced to three months in prison and two years of supervised release for making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations to law enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett of the Southern District of Texas also ordered her to pay $210,000 in restitution.
Mr. Worden pled guilty in November 2025.
According to court documents, Worden falsely accused former astronaut Anne McClain of guessing her bank account password and gaining unauthorized access from the space station during her divorce proceedings.
As a result of an internal investigation, McClain, who had denied the charges, was ultimately found not guilty. Despite this, Worden continued to promote false claims to the press and hired media consultants to amplify them, the documents state. Evidence showed that Mr. Worden also released personal information about Mr. McClain.
McClain, a decorated NASA astronaut and U.S. Army colonel, was one of three crew members whose Soyuz spacecraft docked at the orbiting research facility in December 2018. Mr. Worden had filed for divorce that same year, so he may have needed some space.
The charges came seven months later and were the first time anyone had been charged with a crime in space.
However, an investigation revealed that Warden’s bank account was opened in April 2018 and was accessible to McClain until January 2019, when Warden changed the account credentials. Authorities determined that Worden had given McClain access to his personal assets as early as 2015.
Worden remained free on bail and was allowed to voluntarily surrender with a decision on whether he would be committed to a federal prison in the “near future.”
NASA’s Office of Inspector General investigated the incident.
McClain returned to the space station in March 2025 as mission commander for a four-person world crew that rescued two astronauts who were forced to stay at the orbiting research facility beyond their scheduled term because NASA determined the spacecraft was incapable of returning to Earth.
