Apollo 11 Lunar Receiving Laboratory Menu, Signed by Buzz Aldrin

Apollo 11 Lunar Receiving Laboratory Menu, Signed by Buzz Aldrin

This menu was manufactured for the crew of Apollo 11 for use during their enforced period of quarantine after their historic mission. Buzz Aldrin has signed it, although it is unknown when he did this.

As the first Moon landing, Apollo 11 posed many unknown questions. One question was would the crew bring back bacteria that could be potentially harmful? To counteract this threat, the decision was taken to place them in quarantine until medical staff could be certain that there was no risk. For the majority of the quarantine period they remained in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL), at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.

Inside the LRL medical staff wanted to make sure that the food being eaten would not make the astronauts sick - as this might misleadingly make it appear that unknown Moon bacteria was making the crew ill. The food that the astronauts ate had to be of the highest standards and NASA turned to Stouffer Foods for much of it, who were experts in frozen meals. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins selected the menus pre-flight during training.