What does the Moon smell like?

[SorellaLaBefana]

Recreating the fragrance of the Moon in a lab...

Most animals use odours to locate food, find mates, maintain social bonds and avoid enemies. Humans are relatively poorly equipped to do any of this, because we have a lot fewer olfactory receptors than dogs or elephants, for example. Many people fail to appreciate how important smells are for the enhancement of their lives.

This photograph shows me at work as an ‘aroma sculptor’ in the laboratory at my house in a village near Toulouse, in southern France. Here, I’m working on creating the smell of the Moon for an exhibition at Space City, a museum in Toulouse. I based the odour I manufactured – like that of spent gunpowder — on Buzz Aldrin’s description of what he smelt when he took off his helmet in the lunar module on the Moon in 1969...


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01301-9

Heartwarming image of an old man happy in his garden, happy in his life.

[claudette]

1. Cheese?

😁

[MiHale]

2. His museum is now on the bucket list...

I just scent in my reservation.

[Hortensis]

3. Had to go look up how the moon smelled to astronauts.

From Smithsonian Magazine:

The Moon has a smell. It has no air, but it has a smell. Each pair of Apollo astronauts to land on the Moon tramped lots of Moon dust back into the lunar module—it was deep gray, fine-grained and extremely clingy—and when they unsnapped their helmets, Neil Armstrong said, “We were aware of a new scent in the air of the cabin that clearly came from all the lunar material that had accumulated on and in our clothes.” To him, it was “the scent of wet ashes.” To his Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin, it was “the smell in the air after a firecracker has gone off.”

All the astronauts who walked on the Moon noticed it, and many commented on it to Mission Control. Harrison Schmitt, the geologist who flew on Apollo 17, the last lunar landing, said after his second Moonwalk, “Smells like someone’s been firing a carbine in here.” Almost unaccountably, no one had warned lunar module pilot Jim Irwin about the dust. When he took off his helmet inside the cramped lunar module cabin, he said, “There’s a funny smell in here.” His Apollo 15 crewmate Dave Scott said: “Yeah, I think that’s the lunar dirt smell. Never smelled lunar dirt before, but we got most of it right here with us.”

I love that picture of Moisseeff's lab and himself happily at work. Definitely bucket list worthy.

Thanks, Sorella.

[SorellaLaBefana]

4. Thanks for the Smithsonian Reference

There is so much in the world which we let go by.

=^,^=