The Smell of Space

According to NASA scientists, space smells a lot like my uncle's workshop. One can detect hints of fried steak, hot metal, and the welding of a motorbike. They have hired Steven Pearce, a chemist and managing director of fragrance manufacturing company Omega Ingredients, to recreate the smell in a laboratory. NASA will use his research to help train potential astronauts. Steven said, "I did some work for an art exhibition in July, which was based entirely on smell, and one of the things I created was the smell of the inside of the Mir space station. NASA heard about it and contacted me to see if I could help them recreate the smell of space to help their astronauts."

Comments

Re:How do you smell space?

[retchdog]

It has a smell likely because we perceive sensations by association, in a relative manner. It's a cute (though somewhat frivolous) trick to simulate this association by engineering.

If you've ever been in an acoustically-isolated chamber, the silence is so overwhelming that it almost has its own sound. We're just not used to such near-perfect silence, so we try to interpret the novelty as a sound.

Similarly, if you put near-pure (95%) alcohol on your tongue, it will feel greasy because it is so dry that it dehydrates your tongue. The absence of water feels greasy.

Re:How do you smell space?

[Fox_1]

You can smell underwater , well not you per se- there's a creature - a shrew or vole I think, or maybe muskrat. Anyways there is a Rat like creature that when underwater blows a small bubble of air out it's nose and then sucks it back (kinda the inverse of the spit/snot drop we've all done as kids). This allows it to smell the water and the scent of things in the water. It can actually track underwater by smell.

I think this story is referring to the locker room smell of human habitats in space, not actually the smell of space. But there are chemicals in space - it's not actually nothing nothing nothing and then planets and sun. In theory one could put atmosphere into a sample of 'vacuum' and try to sniff anything that volatilizes. But concentrations of matter are so low in space that it still seems kinda implausible.

So my point is, I don't know how to smell space, but I didn't know how smell underwater either until I watched the discovery channel.

Hmmmmm

[Cap'nPedro]

That's odd.... the things described as being space seem to smell exactly like Ozone.

How odd.

Re:Just PR

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Well, thanks to you, at least I'm not ignorant anymore. Actually, this makes a lot of sense to me, now. I take a train to work every day. Sometimes, when the engineer has to brake real hard, the breaks give off that familiar "burning your brakes" smell. One time I mentioned it to the conductor, when he was checking my ticket. He quipped:

Oh, that's nothing . . . a total brake failure smells entirely different. And you would notice it immediately . . . because I would not be checking tickets!"

Re:How do you smell space?

[Knuckles]

If you've ever been in an acoustically-isolated chamber, the silence is so overwhelming that it almost has its own sound. We're just not used to such near-perfect silence, so we try to interpret the novelty as a sound.

I thought what you hear is the sound of yourself? You know, blood streaming and stuff. Ah, right, here we go.