The
smell of space will linger for the seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle
Discovery long after they return to Earth on Saturday.
"One
thing I've heard people say before, but it wasn't so obvious, was the smell
right when you open up that hatch," Discovery pilot Dominic
"Tony" Antonelli said after a March 21 spacewalk. "Space
definitely has a smell that's different than anything else."
The
odor, Antonelli said, could be smelled once spacewalkers locked the station
airlock's outer hatch and reopened the inner door.
Discovery
is set to land at 1:39 p.m. EDT (1739 GMT) tomorrow at NASA's Kennedy Space
Center in Florida after a
13-day mission that delivered a new crewmember and the final set of U.S.
solar wings to the International Space Station. It was after each of the
three spacewalks performed by the shuttle crew that the spaceflyers
detected the distinctive odor of space.
Like
ozone, or gunpowder
Japanese
astronaut Koichi Wakata, who launched to the station aboard Discovery and
stayed behind when it left to join the outpost's crew, said he also could smell
the odd odor that wafted in from outside the station. But both Antonelli and
Wakata, who helped Discovery's spacewalkers climb in and out of their
spacesuits, could not put words to the distinctive out-of-this-world scent.
Former
NASA astronaut Thomas Jones, a veteran
of three spacewalks before retiring from spaceflying in 2001, thinks the
odor could stem from atomic oxygen that clings to spacesuit fabric.
"When
you repressurize the airlock and get out of your suit, there is a distinct odor
of ozone, a faint acrid smell," Jones told SPACE.com, adding that
the smell is also similar to burnt gunpowder or the ozone smell of electrical
equipment. "It's not noticeable inside the suit. The suit smells like
plastic inside."
The
smell, he adds, only occurs on a shuttle or the space station after a spacewalk
and is unmistakable to astronauts working with the spacesuits and equipment
that was used in the vacuum of space.
"In
those tight spaces, your nose gets right next to the fabric," Jones said.
"I like to think of it as getting a whiff of vacuum!"
Headed
home
The
three spacewalks performed by Discovery's crew occurred between March 19 and
Monday as the astronauts installed the space station's final set of solar
arrays to boost the orbiting laboratory to full power.
The
shuttle ferried Wakata — Japan's first long-term resident — to the space
station, where he replaced NASA
astronaut Sandra Magnus as a member of the outpost's three-person crew.
Magnus is returning home aboard Discovery to complete a 4 1/2-month mission to
the space station. The shuttle undocked from the space station on Wednesday.
Discovery
astronauts spent Friday checking the shuttle's systems for its planned landing
tomorrow and speaking with students at Punahou School
in Honolulu, Hawaii, President
Barack Obama's high school alma mater. The spaceflyers spoke with President
Obama before departing the space station.
SPACE.com
is providing continuous coverage of Discovery's STS-119 mission with reporter Clara Moskowitz and senior editor Tariq
Malik in New York. Click
here for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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