Does the Sun smell of anything?
It’s difficult to know if the Sun has a smell because we haven’t got very close to it – that should change in 2018 when NASA launches its Solar Probe Plus missions, designed to actually enter the Sun’s atmosphere.
We do know what space smells like, thanks to spacewalks by astronauts. Of course they can’t smell it through their suits, but when they come back inside, their suits and instruments have a distinctive odour.
Some astronauts have described it as smelling like a grilled steak, heated metal, or in the words of astronaut Don Pettit, “pleasant, sweet-smelling welding fumes.”
A chemist has even re-created the smell on Earth for astronauts in training.
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