US Vice-President Mike Pence can’t keep his hands to himself during visit to Nasa headquarters

In a goof gone viral, US Vice-President Mike Pence touched something he should not have as he visited Nasa headquarters, and his defence smacked of something his boss might do: blame somebody else.

Pence was at Cape Canaveral in Florida Thursday for a speech to employees and also took a tour.

At one point Pence was guided to piece of gear with a sign that identified it as “critical space flight hardware” and a warning in bright, red capital letters: do not touch.

Pence placed his left palm flat on it, anyway, as cameras clicked away. One of the people in the picture is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The rest is meme and tweet history.

Pence sent out a tweet Friday in which he said he was sorry – a blurb with a President Donald Trump-esque exclamation point at the end – and joked that he, Pence, was not really to blame for ignoring the sign, which his hand almost touches.

“Sorry @Nasa ... @MarcoRubio dared me to do it!,” Pence wrote.