Snapshot of a space meal

A SMITHSONIAN snapshot of an astronaut's space meal from the Apollo 10 mission demonstrates the special packaging and food processing required for eating in the reduced gravity of space. This photo shows command module pilot John Young's Meal B lunch - prepared 43 years ago - for mission Day 9. It contains cocoa, salmon salad, sugar cookie cubes, grape punch and hand wipes. The mission only lasted eight days, so he did not eat this food, but astronauts were provided extra supplies if they had to stay in space longer.

Each crewmember was supplied with three meals per day, which provided approximately 2,800 calories. Meals were sorted by day and designated for each astronaut with a corresponding piece of Velcro: white for mission commander, blue for command module pilot, and red for lunar module pilot.