2-839-625 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Beef and vegetables space food, Mercury Friendship 7 mission, 1962. This space food package contains pureed beef with vegetables and was issued to astronaut John Glenn for consumption during his Friendship 7 flight in February 1962. Spacefood for the Mercury missions was placed in tube form to enable the astronaut to squeeze it directly into his mouth. In the later Gemini and Apollo missions, food was dehydrated requiring rehydration with hot water and could be eaten directly from the plastic storage bag. Transferred to the national Air and Space Museum from NASA in 1967.