NASA has asked Steve Pearce, one of England’s top experts on smells, to re-create the smell of outer space in order for them to create a more realistic atmosphere in training programs.

Although Pearce spends most of his time producing smells and flavors for food products, this does not stand as his first unique request. For example, a museum recently asked him to re-create the smell of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra’s hair. No assignment seems too out of reach, as Pearce can re-create a variety of smells in his laboratory, which he runs at Omega Ingredients, located in a small village on the outside of Ipswich (a district in the town of Suffolk, England).

In response to NASA’s request, Pearce explains, "I was a bit surprised when they got in touch. What they want is for me to make the smell of space, so they can make their training exercises with astronauts more realistic."

"So when they are pretending to do a space walk by floating in a swimming pool, it will smell of outer space,” Pearce continues.

Although the assignment initially surprised Pearce, he understands why NASA would make such a request since he knows the significance of smell, the most powerful of all senses. Unlike others, the sense of smell has nerve receptors directly linked to the brain with nothing in between. Pearce explains this significance, “It's the direct extension of the brain. Its direct contact means we get a very quick, very intensive reaction to odors.”

In prehistoric times, smell provided as a way for men to detect danger, and even today, we use this often-overlooked sense on several occasions throughout life. As babies, we use smell to identify our parents and to find our mother’s breast. As we age, certain smells can heavily trigger our memories, taking us back to certain places and situations from the past. Women still use smell to find potential life partners, and as Pearce explains, the sense plays a significant role in food, "Most of what you actually experience and perceive as the flavor of food is coming from the smell - not what's happening in the mouth." 

So how will Pearce use all of this knowledge to re-create the smell of space?

"What they've done is asked astronauts who've done space walks to describe what the smell was like...They said it has a kind of metallic smell like fried steak or hot metal...What I will do is try and re-create those particular odors. I'll let NASA have samples and we'll fine tune it until I've got what they want."