Did You Know?

Space smells. You might not think that a vacuum such as outer space could have any noticeable odor, but astronauts say otherwise. On a recent expedition, International Space Station Science Officer Don Pettit observed that when his colleagues went out on a space walk, he noticed a distinct smell on their clothes when they returned. In a note on NASA’s Space Chronicles Web site, Pettit wrote: “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. … It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.”

Links:
NASA Space Chronicles

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