Daily Times

Fancy smelling like space snowball farts? You may not be tempted after taking a whiff of a powerful new perfume commissioned by a UK space scientist that mimics the smell of a comet.

The “space pong” is a careful re-creation of the smell of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, as “smelt” by the orbiting Rosetta space probe.

The stinky scent was carefully mixed by perfumiers The Aroma Company to re-create the aroma of the comet’s thin atmosphere, which was found by Rosetta to contain chemical compounds that smell of rotten eggs and bitter almonds, among other things.

The perfume is described by New Scientist journalist Jacob Aron as having a “sharp, unpleasant scent” that he could feel as a “physical presence” inside his skull. Astronomer Dr Colin Snodgrass at The Open University came up with the idea as a way of engaging people with the Rosetta mission, as part of next week’s Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition in London.

Members of the public will be able to smell the comet for themselves on specially commissioned postcards.

“They aren’t quite scratch and sniff” said Dr Snodgrass, but “people can take them away”. The Rosetta space probe was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on 2nd March 2004 with the goal of completing the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted.

After a 4 billion mile trip, the probe rendezvoused with the 2.7-mile long comet in August 2014 and after mapping the surface of the comet, entered orbit around it on September 10 that year.

Rosetta’s high-tech “nose” used a technique called mass spectrometry to detect strong-smelling chemicals given off by the comet, including ammonia, methane, formaldehyde, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen cyanide and sulphur dioxide.

As well as these smelly, “relatively simple bits of chemistry”, Dr Snodgrass said that both Rosetta and the landing module Philae have detected rarer “carbon containing organic species”.

This is important because previously some scientists have speculated that comets which bombarded the young Earth 4 billion years ago may have bought these organic precursors of life as well as enormous quantities of water.

Most excitingly, the orbiting probe has also detected the presence of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which are essential ingredients for life as we know it.

When asked if he had plans to make any more comet scents, Dr Snodgrass said that “judging by the smell of my office, I may not do this again”.

Some people may grow to like the smell however, Jacob Aron noted that “it’s not actually as foul as my first impression led me to believe – somehow a few floral notes are now coming through.” Dr Snodgrass added that, now The Aroma Company had the scent in their library, there was “nothing stopping” people commissioning their own space smell. He warned however that he was “not to be held responsible”.