What does space smell like? This perfume-making astrobiologist is trying to find out

Sheena Goodyear · CBC Radio

· Posted: Jun 03, 2025 4:58 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

After a agelong vocation of creating decorator perfumes, Marina Barcenilla decided to crook her chemoreceptor to the cosmos. 

The fragrance decorator enrolled successful assemblage successful 2015 to survey planetary science. She was taking classes successful astrochemistry — the chemic constitution of outer abstraction — erstwhile she realized she could wed her 2 passions. 

"Whenever I spot thing new, the archetypal question is: I wonderment what that smells like," she told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"One time I thought: Actually, this molecule that I'm studying? I person it successful my perfume lab. And this odor that I americium imagining? I could really make it."

Barcenilla is present an astrobiology doctoral researcher astatine the University of Westminster successful London, England. When she's not exploring the feasibility of beingness connected Mars, she's recreating the smells of space, from the sulfuric stench of Jupiter's deepest clouds, to the pungent alcohol-like punch astatine the centre of the Milky Way. 

Four of those stellar scents are present disposable for nationalist sniffing astatine the London Natural History Museum, arsenic portion of the ongoing exhibit: Space: Could beingness beryllium beyond Earth?

'Antiseptic,' but besides similar gunpowder?

So what does abstraction odor like? 

"I don't deliberation it smells precise bully successful general," said Barcenilla.

Those successful the cognize tin attest. Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, upon returning from the International Space Station, told CBC News successful 2009 that abstraction smells "cold" and  "antiseptic."

"I opened the hatch six hours aft the abstraction walk. This full airlock country had been exposed to the vacuum of abstraction for each those hours. So erstwhile I opened the door, I smelled what was benignant of an antiseptic smell," she said.

"It was not detergent but it was decidedly similar a hospital-smell benignant and I thought, 'Wow, that's the odor of space.' The much I thought astir it, I thought: 'Wow, this is what thing smells like, due to the fact that there's astir apt thing near successful there, not a azygous microbe oregon anything.'"

Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield, meanwhile, described it differently, noting successful 2013 that helium and galore others aboard the presumption reported a "burnt steak and gunpowder" odor successful the airlock.

"Not precisely a outpouring garden," helium said successful a Canadian Space Agency video.

Barcenilla says that erstwhile it comes to the smells of space, it truly depends connected what, specifically, you mean.

"Most of abstraction is rather bare and … it isn't truly going to smell," she said. "But it's erstwhile you get to circumstantial planets oregon moons, oregon erstwhile you spell to a molecular unreality wherever we find precocious concentrations of antithetic gases and microscopic dust, that we tin past find molecules and chemic compounds that person a smell."

Barcenilla says she's created 25 smells since she began doing this enactment successful 2017.

For the depository exhibit, she whipped up the scent of Mars, which is her technological specialty; Titan, a ample satellite orbiting the satellite Saturn; Bennu, an asteroid; and Earth arsenic it was immoderate 3.5-4 cardinal years ago, erstwhile beingness was conscionable beginning.

"The aboriginal Earth is simply a spot smelly. It's a operation of a small spot of benignant of earthy bedewed smell, similar what you get erstwhile it rains, but besides with the odor that you get from assorted microbial strains," she said. 

"One of the smells that you get is simply a benignant of sulphury cabbagey odor that goes successful determination arsenic well. So that's a spot stinky."

She admits that nary of her creations tin beryllium fact-checked, per se. 

"In space, you can't odor truthful it's ever going to beryllium impossible. We don't person aerial that we tin breathe, truthful that's wholly retired of the question," she said. "But what I'm trying to bash is recreate the chemistry that we find successful assorted places successful space."

'The much it stinks, the much radical similar to odor it'

Barcenilla has brought her abstraction smells to schools to thatch children, and she's besides had a accidental to ticker radical interact with them astatine the museum. 

"I ever thought radical are going to beryllium a spot frightened astir the smelly stuff, but no, those are the champion ones," she said. "The much it stinks, the much radical similar to odor it and the much they laughter and the much questions they inquire astir it."

Triggering that curiosity, she says, is the full point. 

"It's astir bringing abstraction person to Earth, and it's for radical to unfastened their minds and recognize that everything that we person retired determination successful abstraction has besides ended up present connected Earth," she said.

As overseas arsenic the last frontier whitethorn seem, Barcenilla says there's thing retired determination that's genuinely unfamiliar, astatine slightest from an olfactory perspective.

Jupiter's interior clouds? Barcenilla tells BBC News they're afloat of ammonia and sulphur, thing you mightiness find successful fertilizer, and which smells similar rotten eggs. 

The precise centre of our galaxy? There you'll find Ethyl formate, a compound commonly recovered successful fruit, and which astir apt smells, astatine best, similar rum, and astatine worst, similar nail polish remover. 

"We are portion of the full large cosmos," Barcenilla said. "There's this saying that goes astir that we are each stardust, and it is true. Everything that we are made of, everything we odor present connected Earth, has primitively travel from space."