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, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce.

The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilization and carried by a surrogate.

Worden's

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