23 years ago, a NASA intern stole millions of dollars worth of lunar rocks in what probably turned into one of the most bizarre heists ever.
In July 2002, intern Thad Roberts, then 24, came up with a plan to steal lunar material as well as a meteorite from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The samples had been recovered from every Apollo mission that had taken place and were valued at around $21 million (£15.6 million).
As part of his plan, Thad managed to secure a buyer for the materials, who was willing to fork out up to $5,000 per gram of rock.
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However, after becoming concerned over some of the finer details, the buyer alerted the FBI, which began looking into the intern undercover.
To aid him in carrying out his plan, Roberts managed to rope in a woman named Tiffany Fowler, a fellow intern at NASA who he worked with.
While the pair started off as friends, their relationship turned romantic, and Fowler agreed - along with another intern, Shae Saur - to join Roberts in his plan to sell the lunar rocks.
Using their ID to gain entry to the space centre, the trio stole an entire safe of lunar material before Roberts and Fowler drove to Orlando to meet their buyer.
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During the trip, Roberts revealed how he had placed some of the rocks underneath their bed covers so that he could effectively 'have sex on the moon'.
“I take some of the moon rocks and I put them underneath the blanket on the bed… I never said anything but I’m sure she could feel it,” he told CBS News in 2012.
“It was more about the symbol of what we were doing, basically having sex on the moon. It’s more uncomfortable than not, but it wasn’t about the comfort at that point. It was about the expression. And no one had ever had sex on the moon before. I think we can safely say that.”
But their plan soon came crashing down.
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When Roberts and Fowler met up with the buyers, they were actually FBI agents.
Roberts was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, while Fowler and Saur received 180 days of house arrest and 150 hours of community service.
"My impressions of Thad are that, you know, he was a very bright, motivated student, one of his goals was to be an astronaut," said Nick Nance, one of the FBI agents.
"And I think he had his foot in the door with NASA, was well on his way to reaching that goal. And then this one greedy event, you know, he threw his life away in one fell swoop."
However, Roberts said he didn't take the rocks to live a lavish lifestyle, adding: “We weren’t going to take this money we were getting from it to go buy a yacht or lots of cars or a big house. We were gonna live just the small kind of lifestyle we were, but fund science that might change the world, you know?”
Where is Thad Roberts now?
After his arrest and sentencing, Roberts also confessed to stealing dinosaur bones and fossils from the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City while he was in uni, PEOPLE reports.
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Roberts was released from prison in 2008, two years early, with him and Fowler reportedly never seeing each other again.
Currently, according to his website, Roberts works as a theoretical physicist for a private think tank and 'is still taking steps to one day fly to space'.
According to his TEDx page: "Thad left prison with something more valuable to him than a safe full of moon rocks – a manuscript over 700 pages long that lucidly describes how he was led to a new geometric axioms for the structure of spacetime.
"The result was quantum space theory (qst), a specific form of superfluid vacuum theory (SVT), which now stands as a candidate for the theory of quantum gravity.
"Thad also works as a public speaker for the American Program Bureau, where he encourages everyone to chase their dreams, to richly experience the world for themselves, and to support others in their dreams."
Topics: NASA, Space, Science, World News
Lucy Devine