[Lee Stewart]

Tang is an artificially flavored drink mix that was formulated by General Foods Corporation food scientist William A. Mitchell in 1957, and first marketed in powdered form in 1959.
.
Sales of Tang were poor until NASA used it on John Glenn's Mercury flight in February 1962 and on subsequent Gemini missions. Since then it has been closely associated with the U.S. manned spaceflight program, and created the misconception that Tang was invented for the space program.