The Moon has been romanticised for centuries, but few people have ever tried to give someone a piece of it. In 2002, that idea became part of an extraordinary theft at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center, where an intern helped remove a safe containing Apollo lunar samples and other irreplaceable scientific material. The stolen collection included about 17 pounds of Moon rocks, material from a Martian meteorite and research notes belonging to Nasa scientist Everett Gibson. The plan soon moved beyond a bizarre romantic gesture. The lunar samples were offered for sale online, attracting the attention of a Belgian collector who contacted the FBI. Investigators posed as buyers and arranged a meeting in Orlando on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. By then, they were already closing in on the people who had taken the samples.
The material Roberts targeted was kept at Johnson Space Center as part of Nasa’s collection of extraterrestrial samples. These were pieces returned by astronauts during the Apollo missions, carrying scientific records that could not simply be replaced. The collection also included material from a Martian meteorite. Alongside the rocks were decades of handwritten scientific notes belonging to Nasa scientist Everett Gibson. Roberts was not an outsider who had somehow found a way into the building. He was already inside the organisation as an intern, which gave him a degree of familiarity with the facility and its routines. That access would become central to the theft. The eventual value placed on the stolen material was around $21 million. Contemporary accounts put the quantity of lunar samples at roughly 17 pounds, or 7.7 kilograms.
Roberts had met Tiffany Fowler, another Nasa intern, and the relationship became intertwined with the increasingly bizarre plan. Accounts of the case describe Roberts as wanting to give his girlfriend the Moon, literally. Some of the stolen material was later placed beneath the bed in a hotel room during an intimate encounter. Roberts subsequently described the gesture as a symbolic attempt to create the experience of being “on the Moon”. But romance was not the only element of the scheme. Roberts also looked for someone who might buy lunar samples. That meant the theft had to move beyond a private stunt and into the illegal trade of material that had been removed from Nasa. The person behind the proposed purchase would turn out not to be a collector at all.
According to the FBI, in June 2002, an advertisement appeared online offering lunar samples for sale. The seller was using the name Orb Robinson and was asking between $1,000 and $5,000 a gram. A Belgian mineral collector became suspicious and alerted authorities. The FBI then became involved, with investigators taking on the identity of supposed relatives of the collector and communicating with the seller. Reportedly, the conversations eventually produced plans for a meeting in Orlando on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Roberts still believed he was negotiating with genuine buyers. He did not know that federal investigators were already following the trail back towards Nasa.
According to Nasa, on the night of July 13, Roberts and two other interns, Fowler and Shae Saur, entered the Johnson Space Center using their Nasa identification. Their target was the laboratory associated with Gibson. Rather than removing individual samples, they took an entire safe weighing roughly 600 pounds. Inside were lunar samples representing the Apollo landing missions, the Martian meteorite and Gibson’s research material. The theft therefore removed not only rare pieces of extraterrestrial material but also records connected with decades of scientific work. Gibson reported the missing safe on July 15. By then, the FBI was already talking to the person trying to sell the rocks.
Two days after the theft was reported, Roberts supplied the supposed buyers with identification numbers for the samples. The numbers matched records in Gibson’s inventory. The online messages could now be connected to specific Nasa material, while digital evidence from the communications pointed towards servers associated with Johnson Space Center and the University of Utah, where Roberts was studying. The anonymous seller calling himself Orb Robinson was becoming much less anonymous. The meeting in Orlando went ahead on July 20. Roberts arrived with Fowler and Gordon McWhorter, a friend who had become involved in the scheme. During the meeting, Roberts revealed his real identity. Investigators then accompanied the group to a hotel, where the stolen samples were recovered. The arrests followed in the hotel parking area. Saur was arrested separately in Houston that same day. The attempted sale of the Moon rocks had lasted only a short time. The investigation had moved considerably faster.
Recovering the samples did not restore what had been taken. The material had been handled and contaminated during the theft, compromising its usefulness for scientific study. Gibson’s research notes were also part of what had disappeared with the safe. A lunar sample is not valuable simply because someone can put a price on its weight. Its scientific worth comes from its documented origin, condition, composition and the information researchers can extract from it. Once those conditions are damaged, returning the object to a laboratory does not necessarily return it to its former scientific state. The theft therefore left Nasa with a problem that could not be solved simply by finding the missing rocks.
The Moon rock case was not Roberts's only encounter with stolen scientific material. During the investigation, he admitted taking dinosaur bones from a museum in Utah. The admission added another layer to a case that had already begun with one of the most unusual targets imaginable. Roberts, Fowler, Saur and McWhorter were charged with conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. Roberts ultimately received an eight-year prison sentence and served a little over six years before his release in 2008. The other participants faced their own legal consequences. For Roberts, the Nasa internship that had placed him close to some of the most carefully guarded scientific specimens in the United States had ended in federal prison.
