NASA intern st.le $21,000,000 worth of moon rocks

In 2002, NASA intern Thad Roberts, along with fellow interns Tiffany Fowler and Shae Saur, stole a safe containing \$21 million worth of moon rocks from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Using their NASA IDs, they accessed the lab at night and took the entire safe, which housed lunar samples collected during the Apollo missions. Roberts later admitted that he and Fowler had sex on the moon rocks in a hotel room, describing it as a symbolic act of “having sex on the moon.” Their actions not only contaminated the rocks, making them scientifically useless, but also destroyed three decades of handwritten research notes.

The trio planned to sell the rocks online but were caught in an FBI sting operation after an undercover agent posed as a potential buyer. The stolen rocks were recovered from the hotel, and all three interns were arrested. Roberts was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Fowler and Saur received house arrest and community service. The incident drew significant media attention, highlighting the interns’ reckless actions and the loss of valuable scientific materials.