NASA intern stole $21M in moon rocks to impress girlfriend: Inside the 2002 heist

Thad Roberts can say that he's done something that no one else has ever done for love. In 2002, Roberts and two accomplices stole $21 million in moon rocks from NASA, resulting in an eight-year jail sentence. Roberts excuse? Love. 

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Roberts' crime is explored in the 2011 book "Sex on the Moon," by Ben Mezrich, and has been the subject of much discussion. It all started in 2002, when Roberts was an intern at NASA and had the idea to steal the moon as a romantic gesture to his girlfriend of three weeks. 

He was joined by two other NASA interns: his then-girlfriend Tiffany Fowler and Shae Saur. “I was in love with Tiffany,” said Roberts in a 2004 interview with the LA Times. “In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Baby, I’d give you the moon.’ It would be a romantic start to our relationship.”

While he and his accomplices were ultimately captured and sentenced to spend time in prison, in different interviews, Roberts argued that he didn't see the gesture as theft. "I did it because I wanted to be loved. I wanted someone to know that I'd literally cared about them that much. And to have the symbol there to remind them of it," he said to CBS in 2012. 

Sex on the moon? Kind of

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Roberts and Fowler can also take credit for doing something that no one else has ever done before. At least, that we know of. The two became the first couple to have sex on the moon. "I take some of the moon rocks, and I put 'em underneath the blanket in the bed," he said. 

“I never said anything, but I'm sure she could feel it. She never said anything directly, either, but it was more about the symbol of what we were doing — you know, basically having sex on the moon." 

“No one had ever had sex on the moon before. I think we can safely say that," he concluded. 

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According to the FBI, the crime rendered the lunar rocks "useless to the scientific community." The agency also claimed that the thieves had destroyed "three decades' worth of handwritten research notes by a NASA scientist that had been locked in the safe.”

Roberts pleaded guilty to his charges, with news outlets later reporting that he'd also stolen fossils and dinosaur bones from the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City, where he worked for a time. He was released in 2008, after serving six years in prison. He and Fowler reportedly never saw eachother again. 

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