Despite this strange odor described as “toxic” by the crew, three tons of food, fuel and supplies were delivered during the Progress mission.
The smells of space
According to an article from Sent Into Space, a space agency specializing in marketing, space is a place that significantly affects the sense of smell in humans, quite simply because the nose cannot detect an odor there and that the only way for the astronaut to breathe anything is to be inside the spacecraft or to embark on a spacewalk, equipped with a suit.
Thus, the rare testimonies collected speak of a smell of welding smoke, burnt steak or even hot metal. To better convey this very particular smell to the general public, NASA even manufactured a perfume called “smell of the Moon” similar to that of gunpowder. Don Pettit, a chemical engineer and NASA astronaut, explained that the smell of space reminded him of “pleasant and fragrant welding fumes”.
Sometimes, in the middle of this rather uniform smell, another stands out which therefore struggles to go unnoticed. This was the case for that which emanated from the Russian module Poisk as described by NASA in a post unmanned docked with the Poisk module of the International Space Station.
A technical problem, a foul smell
However, upon opening the hatch, cosmonauts Aleksei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner (Roscosmos) noticed “an unexpected smell and small droplets, which prompted the crew to close Poisk’s hatch to the rest of the Russian segment”. However, there is no need to worry for the crew, says the NASA post.
Indeed, the station’s atmosphere has been closely monitored by the space station’s air scrubbers and contaminant sensors. Additionally, flight controllers at Mission Control Center in Houston determined Sunday that the air quality inside the space station was normal. “All other space station operations are proceeding as planned,” NASA said.
A minimization of the facts?
Is NASA minimizing the seriousness of the incident, as the specialist media Ars Technica claims? The media relays information from the independent site Russian Space Web which states that this smell was toxic, that protective equipment had been worn by the cosmonauts and that an additional purification system was installed on their segment.
American astronauts also witnessed the module’s strange smell, since to Don Pettit it smelled like spray paint. To this day, it is still unclear where this strange smell came from, although it would not be the first time that a Russian vehicle has suffered a leak in space, since one of them lost the pressurization of its cooling system in February 2023.
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