Eau de Space, the Perfume That Smells Like Outer Space
Eau de Space is a new fragrance designed to smell like outer space, according to its Kickstarter page.
The campaign has raised almost $200,000.
Astronauts have long shared their perspective on the smells they encounter in space, often describing the musty, metallic whiffs they caught aboard their spacecraft.
What smells like gun powder, steak, raspberries and rum? Outer space, supposedly. And now, thanks to a new fragrance launched on Kickstarter, you don't have to travel all the way to orbit to get a whiff.
Chemist Steve Pearce of Omega Ingredients is behind the new outer space scent, CNN reports. So far, his Kickstarter campaign has 4,695 backers who have raised a total of $193,641.
Pearce has long sought to emulate orbital odors not found on Earth. For one art installation, dubbed "Impossible Smells," he recreated the smell of the Mir Space Station. The fragrance he concocted was a pungent mixture of sweat, nail polish remover, and gasoline, he said at the time. In 2008, Pearce was in talks with NASA to recreate the smell of space in an effort to train astronauts on the scents they might encounter in orbit.
So what does space actually smell like?
"The smell was strong and unique. Nothing like anything I had ever smelled on Earth before," former NASA astronaut Tony Antonelli said in a promotional video for the scent. "Rarely a day goes by when I don't think about the smell of space."
Other astronauts have confirmed that space has a kind of strange, metallic odor. Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was the first female commander of the International Space Station, described the smell of space to CNN in 2002: "I think it kind of has almost a bitter kind of smell in addition to being smoky and burned." Former astronaut Thomas Jones recalled in an interview with Space.com that it smells "sulfurous."
In a video for Wired, retired astronaut Chris Hadfield confirmed that space does in deed smell like gunpowder and burnt steak."To me, it's sort of like brimstone—as if a witch has just been there," he said of the space station's airlock. He suspects that the vacuum of space may be sucking trace chemicals out of the metal walls of the spacecraft. "Maybe it's not even coming from space, maybe it's just coming from space's effect on our ship," he said.
According to the Kickstarter, the team who developed the scent hopes it will be used for educational purposes and to give children the opportunity to experience all the sights, sounds, and smells of being an astronaut.
The brand says Eau de Space is "the next best thing to being there." We've got to smell it to believe it.
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