Astronaut Thomas Jones said it "carries a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell…a little like gunpowder, sulfurous." Tony Antonelli, another space-walker, said space "definitely has a smell that's different than anything else." A gentleman named Don Pettit was a bit more verbose on the topic: "Each time, when I ...
A succession of astronauts have described the smell as '… a rather pleasant metallic sensation ... [like] ... sweet-smelling welding fumes', 'burning metal', 'a distinct odour of ozone, an acrid smell', 'walnuts and brake pads', 'gunpowder' and even 'burnt almond cookie'.
We can't smell space directly, because our noses don't work in a vacuum. But astronauts aboard the ISS have reported that they notice a metallic aroma – like the smell of welding fumes – on the surface of their spacesuits once the airlock has re-pressurised.
The odor clings to their suit, helmet, gloves and tools. Fugitives from the near-vacuum — probably atomic oxygen, among other things — the clinging particles have the acrid aroma of seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes.
Astronauts have reported that the space they sniffed in the airlock of an orbiting vehicle smelled like gunpowder, seared steak, raspberries and rum, which is not exactly lemongrass and patchouli oil.
It turns out that if the universe was infinitely large and infinitely old, then we would expect the night sky to be bright from the light of all those stars. Every direction you looked in space you would be looking at a star. Yet we know from experience that space is black!
Space emits many wavelengths of light - including a lot of blue and red light that our human eyes can see - but also ultraviolet light, gamma rays, and X-rays, which remain invisible to us.
After walking on the Moon astronauts hopped back into their lunar lander, bringing Moon dust with them. They were surprised, and perplexed, to find that it smelled like spent gunpowder.
In space or on the Moon there is no atmosphere to scatter light. The light from the sun travels a straight line without scattering and all the colors stay together. Looking toward the sun we thus see a brilliant white light while looking away we would see only the darkness of empty space.
No, there isn't sound in space.
This is because sound travels through the vibration of particles, and space is a vacuum. On Earth, sound mainly travels to your ears by way of vibrating air molecules, but in near-empty regions of space there are no (or very, very few) particles to vibrate – so no sound.
In space we can assume that there would be no external organisms such as insects and fungi to break down the body, but we still carry plenty of bacteria with us. Left unchecked, these would rapidly multiply and cause putrefaction of a corpse on board the shuttle or the ISS.
In 2009, astronomers were able to identify a chemical called ethyl formate in a big dust cloud at the center of the Milky Way. Ethyl formate happens to be responsible for the flavor of raspberries (it also smells like rum). Space tastes like raspberries!
The lighter layers of gas smell like ammonia (think cleaning products and urine), and a little deeper, it's ammonia as well as rotten egg.
It's also very cold in space. You'll eventually freeze solid. Depending on where you are in space, this will take 12-26 hours, but if you're close to a star, you'll be burnt to a crisp instead.
And if you believe NASA's early moon walkers, our moon doesn't actually smell like cheese. Its scent is more like gunpowder.
An odor that is distinct and weird: something, astronauts have described it, like "seared steak." And also: "hot metal." And also: "welding fumes." Our extraterrestrial explorers are remarkably consistent in describing Space Scent in meaty-metallic terms.
The answer: The stars are there, they're just too faint to show up.
Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time. Closer to the horizon, the sky fades to a lighter blue or white.
According to the space agencies that took them they're just interpretations of our reality. “Its real information in the real universe. Yes, the pictures are enhanced or altered or the colours are changed but it's done for real scientific reasons,” said Dr. Paul Sutter, an Astrophysicist at the Ohio State University.
Based on measurements of the lunar soil and NASA guidelines on skin contact with hot objects, you would probably be able to press a bare hand against the hottest lunar soil without feeling uncomfortably warm. But if your hand hit a rock, you might find yourself yanking it back in pain.
New research confirms what scientists had theorized for years — the moon is wet. There is water on the moon's surface, and ice may be widespread in its many shadows, according to a pair of studies published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Lunar dust is fine, like a powder, but it cuts like glass. It's formed when meteoroids crash on the moon's surface, heating and pulverizing rocks and dirt, which contain silica and metals such as iron.
Above the Earth's atmosphere, outer space dims even further, fading to an inky pitch-black. And yet even there, space isn't absolutely black. The universe has a suffused feeble glimmer from innumerable distant stars and galaxies. This artist's illustration shows NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in the outer solar system.
The largest, R136a1, is approximately 260 times the Sun's mass; the light from these hot, new, bright stars is predominantly blue, however. At first glance, it's surprising, since there are no pink stars, and the majority of young starlight is preferentially blue.
There's a limit to how much of the universe we can see. The observable universe is finite in that it hasn't existed forever. It extends 46 billion light years in every direction from us. (While our universe is 13.8 billion years old, the observable universe reaches further since the universe is expanding).