The Smell Of Space

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/16688-what-does-space-smell-like.html

 

I had always assumed there was no odor in the vacuum of space. I can understand how they are smelling it when they get back in the capsule. When someone comes into a room that smokes I can smell it on their shirt. It will be interesting in the far future to know if the odor changes, as we set up stations farther and farther away from Earth and the Sun.

[CraigD]

Cool story :thumbs_up

 

It reminds me of the various ones that I first encountered in the 1990s, in which the Apollo lunar lander astronauts described moondust as “smelling like spent gunpowder” (for a recent story on the subject, see nasa.com’s The Mysterious Smell of Moondust)

 

Especially interesting about this – and, unfortunately perhaps, fuel for the paranoid conspiracy theories in general – is that millions of folk who closely watched and read everything they could get their hands on about the Apollo landings (including a 9 to 12 year old me :)), perhaps all of us, encountered no report of these amazing, largely or completely unexpected phenomena. Radio communication and printed reports were kept secret.

 

Though I’ve seen no more official explanation than ca. 1990 memoirs of Apollo astronauts and support specialists, the consensus I’ve gathered is that NASA officials worried that such reports would result widespread public fear of unearthly infections being brought back to Earth. Though serious ca. 1970 enthusiasts were well aware that Apollo astronauts got dirty, having no complicated suit-washing system in their LEMs to prevent moondust from getting on them and the LEM interior when they returned to it in their dirty A7L and A7LB spacesuits, this wasn’t widely communicated to the general public, who were instead led to believe that practically sterile precautions were taken to protect the astronauts.

 

When first reported by Armstrong and Aldrin 21 Jul 1969, the reports provoked serious worries, as not only did moondust have a strong smell (and taste, as it unavoidably got into astronauts’ mouths), it was irritating to skin, nasal passages, throats, raising the possibility that airways of the first men on the moon might, asthma-like, suddenly swell closed, killing them. To everyone’s relief, that didn’t happen.

 

Astronauts of the Apollo era being pretty macho by 21st century standards, are believed to have down-played any distress they experienced from contact with moondust, with the exception of Apollo 17’s (the last lander mission) Schmitt, who reported “significant”, “hay fever” –like reactions, which grew less sever on subsequent returns to the LEM.

 

I had always assumed there was no odor in the vacuum of space.

A bit of speculation is needed here, as, to the best of my knowledge, as with the smell of moondust, there’s no certain explanation for these smells. Some believe that the material brought from near vacuum into the warm, moist, oxygen-rich artificial atmosphere of these various spacecraft react with oxygen, essentially burning, to produce a smoky smell, other that molecules in the stuff that produce sensations in human smell and taste glands are “soaked up” by water vapor and carried passively into astronauts’ noses and mouths.

 

Whatever the explanation, I think the consensus is there is no odor in space, either in orbit or on the surface of an airless world, before it’s exposed to an artificial atmosphere, if for no other reason than human smell organs need an atmosphere to work. Whether Astronauts are smelling molecules already there, or ones created by immediate chemical reactions with their artificial air, or both, is, I think, a minor scientific mystery.

 

It will be interesting in the far future to know if the odor changes, as we set up stations farther and farther away from Earth and the Sun.

Given the clear difference between the “spent gunpowder” small reported on the moon, and the “seared steak and welding fumes” reported in low Earth orbit, I’d expect future astronauts to report many new smells, as humankind explores many new extraterrestrial places.

 

The (to me) surprising vagueness of science concerning smells, not only in space, but on Earth, points out an often overlooked gap in our artificial sensor technology. Although artificial sound and light sensors are well known to be much more sensitive and accurate than animal ears and eyes, chemical “smell” sensor technology, though capable of specialized applications like detecting explosive residue to prevent folk from smuggling bombs onto airplanes, is essentially incapable of recognizing a person from their body smell, or even telling the difference between a tasty food treat and a nasty, rotting mess. Despite the money that could be made selling them, workable artificial contraband (mostly cocaine and cannabis) detectors simply don’t exist, the state of the art remaining at literally pre-historic levels, the best “system” remaining trained dogs and other domestic beasts.

 

When it comes to sensor, I think we can reasonably say “smell ...” is the “final frontier”, and vow to “boldly go where no nose has gone before” – though we’d best take dogs with us, as human noses are pretty inferior. :dogwalk:

[Rade]

More Astronaut stories about smell of space as recorded by their helment, a combination of sweet and metallic:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-space-smells-like/259903/

 

Why not a smell to outer-space ? According to GR theory of Einstein it has a shape, it can bend when in contact with matter, and according to QM theory it can contain virtual particles that can exert a force (Casimir effect), and according to Aristotle it has a limit (the inner most boundary that contains). Perhaps the inner most boundary of "outer-space" (outside the Earth atmosphere) has the smell of 'sweet metal' as recorded by the helmet of the Astronauts that moved through it during space walks ? So, although humans cannot directly see outer-space, or feel outer-space, or hear outer-space, we can smell outer-space, and thus via the 'direct evidence' of this one human sense we grant outer-space an identity, that it exists, that it is real ?

[CraigD]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-space-smells-like/259903/

:thumbs_up This linked-to Atlantic article, by staff writer Megan Garber, echos post #1’s linked-to space.com article, with a fun twist about the possibility of some regions of space smelling like raspberries or rum, due to the presence of ethyle formate.

 

Why not a smell to outer-space ? According to GR theory of Einstein it has a shape, it can bend when in contact with matter, and according to QM theory it can contain virtual particles that can exert a force (Casimir effect), and according to Aristotle it has a limit (the inner most boundary that contains).

I don’t think General Relativity or virtual particles need to be considered as explanations for the odor astronauts smell coming from spacesuits brought inside their air-pressurized spacecraft, because conventional anatomy, physiology, and chemistry suffice as well as they do to explain why we smell ordinary smells coming from various objects in the naturally occurring air on earth. In neither case are we, in any but the sense of a very detailed explanation of the underlying mechanism of chemistry, smelling real or virtual elementary particles or the shape or nature of space-time itself – we’re smelling chemical elements and compounds.

 

Perhaps the inner most boundary of "outer-space" (outside the Earth atmosphere) has the smell of 'sweet metal' as recorded by the helmet of the Astronauts that moved through it during space walks ?

Describing the vicinity of the near-Earth orbit of the ISS as the “innermost boundary of outer space” is, I think, a antiquated, geocentric view, appropriate to Aristotle, who along with many 6th century and later Greek philosophers, understood the Earth to be a sphere, but failed to understand that it was physically smaller than the Sun and other stars.

 

The density and chemical abundance of different regions of space appear to be, while dominate odorless hydrogen, appears to be varied, with some regions far from the Earth, Sun, or other stars or planets more dense with more chemically reactive compounds than near Earth.

 

I think what we can only speculate about what these distant places would smell like when sampled in a human-friendly atmosphere. It’s only safe to say, I think, that they likely contain chemical compounds to which our olfactory and taste glands are sensitive, so they’d smell like something.

 

So, although humans cannot directly see outer-space, or feel outer-space, or hear outer-space, we can smell outer-space, and thus via the 'direct evidence' of this one human sense we grant outer-space an identity, that it exists, that it is real ?

I think that, just as we grant the air-filled space between ordinary object on earth is “real”, we grant the space between objects outside of Earth’s atmosphere is real due primarily to the evidence of our visual sense, because we see light emitted and reflected by them. Being animals with good visual perception, somewhat less good auditory perception, and much poorer perception of scents/tastes, we tend to intuitively regard anything we can’t see as empty space, even though we know, scientifically, that nearly all of it is filled with gas and dust.

 

What most sets smell apart from sight and sound is that we have long been and continue to be technologically much less adept at recording it.

 

Drawn and painted visual representations predate history, and with the advent of chemical and electronic motion picture photography, are now practically perfect at showing us places and things we’ve never visited. For a bit over a century, audio recording has allowed us to likewise hear distant and old sounds.

 

Smell, however, are still something that must be experienced directly. Other than via a few marginally successful technologies, such as “scratch and sniff” emulsions, if we want to smell something, be it a particular flower, city, or spacesuit fresh from being brought in from near-Earth space, we’ve got to actually go there and experience it.

[belovelife]

interesting relations to the smell of space

 

i wonder if there is a differance between ....

 

say....

hercules crator

 

and the copernicus crator

[Deepwater6]

interesting relations to the smell of space

 

i wonder if there is a differance between ....

 

say....

hercules crator

 

and the copernicus crator

 

Yes, that was my thought as well different places around the universe, around a pulsar, in the wash of a comets tail, etc. The possibilities could be endless.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/19889-space-smell-candle-think-geek.html

 

Well I guess it was only a matter of time before someone tried to cash in on this. Don't know that I'd want my house to smell like gunpowder just to pretend I'm a space junkie.

[CraigD]

http://www.space.com/19889-space-smell-candle-think-geek.html

 

Well I guess it was only a matter of time before someone tried to cash in on this. Don't know that I'd want my house to smell like gunpowder just to pretend I'm a space junkie.

Aw, the cheating geek exploiters at ThinkGeek didn’t really make the “smell of space” candle smell like (maybe) O1 or rapidly oxidizing regolith, but lavender! Per the article, they first tried a more realistic smell, then decided the “candles must smell nice” principle overrode the “geeks like scientific accuracy” one. Guess we’ll have to wait for someone to make and sell “small of space” incense. :) Anyway, real space fans make their own regolith and space smells in their home vacuum chambers!

 

I recall an interesting bit of Apollo 11 minutia around the “smells like spent gunpowder” descriptions from Armstrong and Aldrin, which they kept secret from the public during and for some time after the landings. The explanation, I recall, is that controllers were alarmed that if they were smelling much of anything strong, it might be because powdered regolith was doing unexpected things to their nasal parts, in which case it might also be messing up their lungs, and their expedition might be headed toward horrible, bloody, (and not good for TV) ruin. Regolith is nasty stuff, similar in microscopic shape and hardness to powdered glass, and Apollo 11’s Eagle lander had limited cleaning facilities – not even the moondust brush that was on Apollo landers from 13 on. The problem was, while the LEMs had air filters to remove the dust from the air once pressurized, it stuck to suits. The Apollo 11 moonwalkers didn’t walk very far or get very dirty, but the Apollo 12’s Conrad and Bean did, making such a mess that they had to leave their helmets on while the filters were cleaning the LEM’s air, and leave their suits in the LEM before reentering the CM to return to Earth.

 

What I’ve seen about future manned moon missions is that they’ll have little vacuum cleaners for indoor/outdoor suits, and possibly have outdoor-only suits that are slipped into through a hatch in a vehicle, with the only parts that are exposed to both outside and inside made of something hard and smooth that dust won’t cling to well. While the Apollo astronauts didn’t suffer any known ill effect from breathing moondust, I expect long-term exposure would cause awful silicosis diseases similar to from unencapsulated asbestos and coal dust.

 

Not experiences even ThinkGeek (from whom over half my last X-Mass goodies came) is likely to sell. :)

[blamski]

some artists i have exhibited with in the past called 'we colonised the moon' have made a couple of projects about the smell of the moon, and had a 'flavorist' develop a moon scent for them. they have used it in larger performative works but also in these nice scratch and sniff cards