![]() When moondust comes in contact with moist air in a lunar module, you get the 'desert rain' effect-and some lovely odors." (For the record, he counts gunpowder as a lovely odor.)Ībove: The moon-a 4 billion year old desert. "The moon is like a 4-billion-year-old desert," he says. Maybe something similar happens on the moon. The air is suddenly filled with sweet, peaty odors." Water evaporating from the ground carries molecules to your nose that have been trapped in dry soil for months. "What do you smell? Nothing, until it rains. "Picture yourself in a desert on Earth," he says. ISS astronaut Don Pettit, who has never been to the moon but has an interest in space smells, offers one possibility: Moondust is also rich in iron, calcium and magnesium bound up in minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. These impacts, which have been going on for billions of years, fuse topsoil into glass and shatter the same into tiny pieces. What is moondust made of? Almost half is silicon dioxide glass created by meteoroids hitting the moon. Hold a match to moondust-nothing happens, at least, nothing explosive. These are flammable organic molecules "not found in lunar soil," says Gary Lofgren of the Lunar Sample Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Modern smokeless gunpowder is a mixture of nitrocellulose (C 6H 8(NO 2) 2O 5) and nitroglycerin (C 3H 5N 3O 9). To be clear, moondust and gunpowder are not the same thing. Right: Aren't spacesuits supposed to be white? This one, worn by Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt, is grayed by moondust. Schmitt says, "All of the Apollo astronauts were used to handling guns." So when they said 'moondust smells like burnt gunpowder,' they knew what they were talking about. "It has that taste - to me, gunpowder - and the smell of gunpowder, too." On the next mission, Apollo 17, Gene Cernan remarked, "smells like someone just fired a carbine in here." Schmitt says he has sensitive turbinates: "The petrochemicals in Houston used to drive me crazy, and I have to watch out for cigarette smoke." That's why, he believes, other astronauts reacted much less than he did.īut they did react: "It is really a strong smell," radioed Apollo 16 pilot Charlie Duke. He was a geologist and readily admitted to sniffles. "Pilots think if they confess their symptoms, they'll be grounded." Unlike the other astronauts, Schmitt didn't have a test pilot background. Or, at least, "they didn't admit it," laughs Schmitt. Other astronauts didn't get the hay fever. I think I was developing some immunity to it." "It was there again after the second and third EVAs, but at much lower levels. ![]() Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery My turbinates (cartilage plates in the walls of the nasal chambers) became swollen." Years later he recalls, "When I took my helmet off after the first EVA, I had a significant reaction to the dust. "It's come on pretty fast," he radioed Houston with a congested voice. The experience gave Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt history's first recorded case of extraterrestrial hay fever. Note the smudges of dust on his longjohns and forehead. Right: At the end of a long day on the moon, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene cernan rests inside the lunar module Challenger. Once their helmets and gloves were off, the astronauts could feel, smell and even taste the moon. No matter how hard they tried to brush their suits before re-entering the cabin, some dust (and sometimes a lot of dust) made its way inside. Moondust was incredibly clingy, sticking to boots, gloves and other exposed surfaces. But, after every moonwalk (or "EVA"), they would tramp the stuff back inside the lander. They couldn't touch their noses to the lunar surface.
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