At the request of NASA, a British chemist has begun to recreate the smell of outer space to help astronauts in their training.If you’ve ever had the urge to know what space smells like, you can now find out -fried steak, hot metal and welding a motorbike. Mix them all together and you now have a good idea what Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and company snorted when they went into space.
Now chemist Steven Pearce has been commissioned to recreate that smell to help trainees get used to the odor before they take off into the galaxy. He hopes to have it ready by the end of the year.
We have already produced the smell of fried steak, but hot metal is proving
more difficult. We think it’s a high energy vibration in the molecule and that’s
what we’re trying to add to it now.’
