Did Astronauts Actually Eat 'Astronaut Ice Cream?'

You've probably seen so-called 'Astronaut Ice Cream' at a space museum gift shop, marketed as a novel way to get a taste of space and the life of an astronaut. But have astronauts ever actually eaten astronaut ice cream while on missions?

Vox explores this question that might have not even occurred to the many of us that blindly accepted astronaut ice cream at face value. Its video, Astronaut Ice Cream Is a Lie — which shares the results of this investigation — has gained over 270,000 views since it was posted on Monday. A visit to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum only found freeze-dried ice cream in the gift shops and not among the various artifacts collected from space trips, which includes food that astronauts actually ate on missions.

Vox's call with astronaut Walt Cunningham, a lunar module pilot on Apollo 7, the only mission where the ice cream was said to have been consumed, further confirms the astronaut ice cream myth. Cunningham says, "We never had any of that."