Strange Smell of Space Recreated by Jasper; NASA Notified
Posted by Paul Woodhouse at October 24th, 2008
Welder in Space
Because I’m as dimwitted as the rest of you, my first thoughts on learning that space had some sort of aroma led me to dismissing the concept out of hand. We all know there’s no air for starters and that anyone daft enough to open their helmet for a sly whiff would wind up covering the inside of it with their own explosive grey matter within thirty seconds.
Then again, I suppose it helps if you read an article rather than draw mindless conclusions from just the headline. If we dig a little deeper we find:
“We have a few clues as to what space smells like. First of all, there were interviews with astronauts that we were given, when they had been outside and then returned to the space station and were de-suiting and taking off their helmets, they all reported quite particular odours. For them, what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike.”
Apparently the perfume scientist quoted above is from Manchester and has been approached by NASA to reproduce the same space odour so that astronauts can train their nostrils for the peculiar pong.
And this is what the International Space Station’s Science Officer Don Pettit had to say about the smell after a spell up yonder in 2003:
“Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn’t quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as ‘tastes like chicken.’ The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.”
So, the smell we’re looking at is something akin to hot metal, fried steak, and welding a motorbike. How bizarre.
But, help could very well be at hand. Just follow me here, NASA, as I think we may be able to come to some kind of arrangement.
This is similar to the aroma that wafts from Jasper on any average Friday afternoon after the weekly chippy run and he’s got a bit of steak pie stuck in his whiskers. If he happens to do a spot of welding at the same time….BLAMMO – there’s your space scent right there.
Although, if he’s been on the cooking sherry the night before having watched Braveheart, he smells more like a tramp dipped in trifle.
Either way, just give us a bell, and we’ll give your pong police full access at our going rate.
So is that the smell of space? I’m thinking maybe it is caused by the surface metal of the ship. After all, it is exposed to radiation and other elements, maybe that causes some reaction and thus sticks to the suits of the astronauts… Hmm it is bizarre (I think) that space would have a smell… It would mean that certain/ common chemicals are present through out space. Then, isn’t it a contradiction that Space is no longer a Space anymore since we could find this chemical in space?
I know what you’re saying. I’m with you all the way.
Obviously it needs somebody with a greater collective intellect than ours to explain it.
That is very interesting! I would have assumed that since there was no oxygen, that there would be no odors.
Steve
Space is bound to have a distinctive smell. You do not need oxygene to carry odours. Space is awash with iron & carbon elements. Heat these elements with a very large space station burner & hey presto you have billions of cooked elements sticking to the suit of any unsuspecting passing astronaut. Safe Landings!
See, that’s what we needed – somebody with a double-barreled surname to set us straight. Had you been called merely Steven Grant we wouldn’t be able to assume you studied Space Chemistry at Oxbridge – only joshing, sir. Thanks for setting us right.;-)