What better way to celebrate the landing on the moon than with #spacebacon?

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon, they couldn’t pop champagne or light up sparklers (for obvious reasons). Instead, they ate bacon.

Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teital recently revealed on her Vintage Space blog that bacon cubes were included in the first meal eaten on the moon. Teital writes,

“Bacon cubes were among the meals stored in the lunar module. And it worked out that meal A, the first scheduled meal to be eaten on the Moon, consisted of bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit drink and coffee. They ate history’s first meal on Moon slightly ahead of schedule after landing at the Sea of Tranquility.”

We doubt that the bacon bits Armstrong and Aldrin celebrated with were much more than dried up, salty bits of something that resembled meat; perhaps this is why the diets of modern-day spacefarers’ are devoid of it.

Today, the closest thing astronauts have to bacon is freeze-dried sausage patties that have to be rehydrated with hot water. Doesn’t sound quite as appealing as #spacebacon.

Bacon was the first food eaten on the moon because America truly is beautiful. http://t.co/3uOvTpp48s #spacebacon — E.J. Judge (@ejjudge) April 9, 2014

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[via Smithsonian]