'No one had ever sex on the moon': Nasa intern stole $21m of lunar samples in 2002, put them under blanket

48-year-old Thad Roberts is still being remembered for his daring and one-of-a-kind heist as he stole lunar samples from Nasa where he was interning in 2002. Roberts was 24 years old at that time, and he gave his girlfriend ' sex on the moon ' for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Roberts, his girlfriend Tiffany, who was also a Nasa intern and a third intern hatched the plan to steal samples of moon rocks and a meteorite. Roberts even connected online with a potential buyer from Belgium who was willing to pay $1,000 to $5,000 per gram of lunar samples. The buyer alerted the FBI at that time but Roberts did not sell those to him.

Roberts first had sex on the moon with his girlfriend as he said, without her knowledge, he put the lunar samples underneath the blanket on the bed. "I never said anything, but I'm sure she could feel it," Roberts 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.”

Then Roberts went to the buyers, but by that time, FBI agents tracked them and they were arrested. The samples were "useless to the scientific community", but the heist destroyed three decades of handwritten research notes by a scientist.

Roberts told the police that he did not see it as stealing, as they were not going to get huge money to buy a yacht or a big house or a car. He said he and the other two interns who helped him were struggling at that time.

“I was in love with Tiffany,” Roberts told the LA Times in 2004. “In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Baby, I’d give you the moon.’ It would be a romantic start to our relationship.”

"I mean, the simple answer is to say that I did it for love. 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."