First time for everything

It was bound to happen. I mean, with everyone talking about moving to Mars ("of which the moon is a part") there is bound to be the first fulltime settler on Mars, the first marriage on Mars, the first baby born a Martian, and the first crime on Mars.

We're getting close to that last one. We appear to have documentation of the first crime committed in space, with the charge that a NASA astronaut found time while performing her duties on the International Space Station to break into her ex-spouse's bank statements.

Anne McClain, 40, is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and an astronaut: to wit, Flight Engineer for Expedition 58/59 to the ISS.

She is knee deep, or even higher, in a divorce battle with former wife Summer Worden.

Worden noticed that someone had been rummaging through her bank accounts, and when she asked the bank to see who gained access, she was told someone got  her information using a NASA computer network.  A little more checking, and Worden was able to go to the authorities and make the claim that her ex had violated the law while soaring 254 miles above us.

Worden told KPRC News in Houston that USAA Bank showed her lawyers when and how the accounts were breached. “I was shocked and appalled at the audacity by her to think that she could get away with that, and I was very disheartened that I couldn't keep anything private,” she said.

So Worden complained to the Federal Trade Commission and a family member made a formal complaint with NASA’s internal Office of the Inspector General, accusing McClain of identity theft and improper access to Worden’s financials.

McClain's lawyer says the two women still have intertwined financial interests and McClain was merely making sure all was still copacetic.

McClain was scheduled along with Christina Koch to conduct the first all-female spacewalk ever, but was pulled from that mission and replaced by Nick Hague in a move that NASA said was McClain's decision, as there were not enough space suits in her and Koch's sizes.

Other than to confirm that McClain is still an active astronaut, NASA, unused to being involved in romantic collapses, has no further comment.

I've always found it best to stay out of family quarrels, myself.