In Space No One Can Smell You Scream

I read an interesting article the other day, and I haven't been able to get this topic out of my head since. The article is about how NASA has asked a fragrance company to reproduce the smell of space. What?

My first thought was "space doesn't smell!". My admittedly rudimentary understanding of how the sense of smell works is that molecules from the item with the odor find their way into your nose and alight on your olfactory sensors, which then transmit the odor to your brain. A process that makes me cringe every time I smell poop - basically you have poop in your nose! Yuck. But anyway, space is a vacuum, right? A nothingness. But I guess there are "things" floating around in space (like Earth for example), so I guess it's possible that there are molecules floating around that can transmit odors.

So after I decided that maybe there are things that could cause space to have a "smell", my second thought was "even if space has a smell, no human has ever been exposed directly to the vacuum of space, so how would anyone know what it smells like?". I found an explanation of how space could be smelled here. Apparently astronauts who have operated airlocks after space walks have smelled space in the air within the International Space Station and on the suits of the astronauts who have re-entered the ship. I'll be damned.

So what does space smell like? The first article describes it as a combination of "hot metal, fried steak and the welding of a motorbike". Um, 'kay. The fried steak part kind of freaks me out, but those odors aren't in general unpleasant. So now I can't wait for the "Space" Yankee Candle. OK, maybe not. But I do want to smell it someday. Maybe they'll have a Smell of Space exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum.