• Question: Can you smell stuff in space?

    Asked by purplebug123 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Only whatever’s in your space suit!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      If you put your face out into the vacuum of space, even if you tried to sniff in, all the water in your body would boil and evaporate out, so you wouldn’t be in much of a state to be smelling anything because you’d be busy going Aaaaaarrrghhhh- !

      Also space is pretty empty of stuff in general, so there’s not going to be many molecules floating around that would smell of anything!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      Inside the spacecraft yes. Outside no – because without a helmet you die.

      I heard some spacecraft smell nasty. MIR (the Russian space station) was supposed to smell like a toilet. Take a few people and make them live in a tin can without much access to water for months on end and I suppose it would smell a bit bad….

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