Astronauts are banned from drinking alcohol at work, but this hasn't stopped them sneaking everything from communion wine to cognac into space

• NASA and other space agencies have banned alcohol in space because it can damage equipment.
• But astronauts have found ways around this and smuggled alcohol onto spacecrafts for decades.

Space agencies have, understandably, banned the consumption of alcohol in space, but astronauts have been finding ways around this for decades by smuggling booze onto spacecrafts and getting drunk.

NASA specifically prohibits alcohol and any product that contains it like mouthwash, perfume, or aftershave because it contains chemicals like ethanol that can damage equipment.

"Use of alcohol and other volatile compounds are controlled on ISS due to impacts their compounds can have on the station's water recovery system," Daniel G Huot, a spokesperson for NASA's Johnson Space Center told BBC Future in 2017.

But alcohol actually made it into space during the first moon landing in 1969 when Buzz Aldrin administered a secret communion service, The Guardian reported.

Aldrin had brought along a plastic container of wine and some bread from Webster Presbyterian Church near Houston where he was an elder. He consumed both.

Aldrin described the ceremony in a 1970 copy of Guideposts magazine, per The Guardian: "I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements."

Aldrin had intended to share the event publicly over the radio, but NASA kept it hushed up because it was tackling a lawsuit from an atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair who was trying to prevent the practicing of religion on earth, in space, and even in or around the moon, according to The Guardian.

NASA then officially clamped down on booze in space in 1972, but there have been at least two incidents where astronauts were cleared to fly with booze in their systems after consuming alcohol 12 hours before the flight, a 2007 review found.

The space agency has since banned astronauts from drinking 12 hours before they fly.

Russian space agencies have similar policies, but cosmonauts still found creative ways to hide contraband and sneak it onto spacecraft, Russia Beyond reported in 2017.

In 1971, one cosmonaut's birthday would occur whilst he was in orbit to the Salyut-7 space station. His friends decided to hide a bottle of Armenian cognac in a wristband used for measuring blood pressure before launch.

In 1984, cosmonaut Igor Volk lost two kilograms of weight a week before the launch of the Soyuz, so that he could hide pickled cucumbers and a bottle of cognac in his space suit, and avoid exceeding weight requirements.

Others would hide alcohol in thick books that were hollowed out by removing the pages inside.

One image posted by the Metro shows Russian crew members having a 'cognac party' aboard the Mir space station in 1997 just hours after a flash fire nearly resulted in disaster.