The USAF Dental Service welcomed the opportunity to provide support for the nation's exploration of space when it was tasked with delivering optimum dental care to astronauts and to find a way to provide emergency dental care during prolonged space flight. A high standard of oral health was required of the space pilots, and their training program at Edwards Air Force Base, California, received close dental supervision. When the Manned Space Flight Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operating out of Houston in the early 1960s, most of the astronauts were military and received dental care at nearby Ellington Air Force Base, Texas. Lackland Air Force Base specialists provided consultation and some clinical care when necessary. For example, in 1962, a chipped tooth necessitated a quick visit to Lackland by Lt Col John Glenn shortly before his historic space flight orbiting the earth. The short missions of Mercury required no dental provisions, whereas during the Gemini flights, the astronauts carried toothbrushes. By the time of the Apollo flights, floss and toothpaste became a part of the in-flight dental kit. Air Force dentists developed a foamless ingestible dentifrice called "Nasadent." This was necessary to prevent the need to expectorate and possible dispersal of saliva and debris in the weightless environment of a space capsule. Regular toothpastes with detergents foam excessively in zero-gravity conditions, and this particular dentifrice prevented that. Other studies at SAM dealt with finding an intermediate restorative material for potential use on manned missions and continual evaluation studies of space food frangibility.

Another area of interest that the Dental Service explored was how to handle an unforeseen dental emergency in space. The possibility of accidental trauma to the oral cavity existed in the zero-gravity confined environment of a space capsule. Of concern was the occasional barodontalgia and its possible repercussions in space. An emergency dental kit was designed containing instruments, materials, and drugs that would operate in the weightlessness of space. The kit was lightweight, durable, and compact. By 1966, the development of the kit was completed, and dentists at Lackland trained the astronauts in basic dental procedures such as placement of temporary restorations and simple extractions. The training was comprehensive enough to include actual patient experience for the astronauts.