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, while they were in the midst of a divorce.
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.
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 on Friday.
