Mike Pence Says He Touched NASA Equipment Because Marco Rubio Dared Him
Mike Pence just explained what made him touch the NASA equipment marked "DO NOT TOUCH" a dare from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. "Sorry @NASA@MarcoRubio dared me to do it!" the Vice President tweeted Friday afternoon, accompanied by the now meme-famous photo with everything blurred but Rubio's face. Rubio responded on Twitter, joking that he warned Pence not to break the equipment. , But NASA says there's no apology necessary for the incident at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday. "The do not touch' signs are there as a day-to-day reminder, including the one visible on the titanium Forward Bay Cover for the Orion spacecraft," NASA said in a statement provided to TIME. "Procedures require the hardware to be cleaned before tiles are bonded to the spacecraft, so touching the surface is okay. Otherwise, the hardware would have had a protective cover over it like the thermal heat shield, which was nearby.", , Pence's joking explanation came after the image had been circulating online for hours as people photoshopped it into different backdrops. Pence even tweeted out one of the doctored images,