Does space have a smell? It certainly does, and it is very peculiar; you will not confuse it with anything else. That is according to ISS Commander Aleksandr Skvortsov in answer to a question sent from Earth.

Moscow’s Memorial Cosmonautics museum has been collecting questions from its visitors and sending the most interesting ones to the ISS for several months now.

One of the recent questions was, “What does space smell like?”

“Well, you can’t even describe it and can’t compare it to anything whatsoever, it’s very specific,” RIA Novosti has quoted Skvortsov as saying.

He said at first he thought it was the smell of the ISS metal, but after space walks the astronauts’ suits smelled the same. “It might be the specific smell of the micro-atmosphere around the ISS, but it certainly exists,” the cosmonaut added.

In an earlier blog by another Russian cosmonaut, Maksim Suraev, he described space more specifically, “It’s like when you knock two pieces of gravel against each other.”