Star Dirt: This is how bad space smells | Life & Knowledge

2024-01-11 21:07:59

Phew! Astronauts would probably have to hold their noses in space if they didn’t wear a helmet. It smells really bad there.

Of course it is impossible to sniff directly. Because that would mean certain death without a spacesuit. But astronauts repeatedly reported how unpleasant their space smelled when they returned to their airtight chambers following a spacewalk.

Comets smell the nastiest: They are considered the most beautiful celestial bodies, but are surrounded, among other things, by a ring of hydrogen sulfide molecules and ammonia. Which gives off a smell of rotten eggs, flatulence, or urine. That reports space.com and refers to numerous expeditions of the past decades.

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Between gasoline, raspberries and liquor flags

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, appears to be emitting gasoline fumes. Reason: It is covered by rivers and lakes made of oil. Its atmosphere consists of a dense smog of hydrocarbons. The crude oil for gasoline production consists of these molecules (including benzene).

And what does our moon smell like? Astronauts of the Apollo moon landings noticed a smell similar to gunpowder.

But there were also reports of very special smells in space: sometimes it smelled of rum and raspberries, but then it also smelled bitter and smoky, astronauts reported. The alcoholic smell was explained by the huge cloud of dust Sagittarius B2 at the center of our galaxy. It contains lots of alcohol, including vinyl alcohol, methanol and ethanol.

The huge dust cloud Sagittarius B2 smells of rum

Photo: NASA

Anyone who was on the International Space Station (ISS) thought they might smell burnt steak. Scientists attribute this to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. They occur in space, but also in charred foods on Earth.

The metallic smell, which was also detected here, is probably a reaction to oxygen: individual oxygen atoms stick to the astronauts’ spacesuits before they go into the vacuum of space. When re-entering the airlock, the atoms combine with fresh oxygen atoms to form ozone.

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