Astronauts returning from spacewalks say space leaves a smell on their suits; NASA crews have compared it with metal, gunpowder, and ozone

Here’s the thing: imagine an astronaut stepping back into the airlock after spending hours out in space, removing his helmet, expecting the scentless vacuum of outer space, and instead being greeted with a smell and no, not a pleasant one. The smell resembled a mix of burnt gunpowder, scorched meat, and a blowtorch. While it may seem as something straight out of a feverish reverie, a NASA report states that this is an actual occurrence, and so unusual that the agency hired a chemist to reproduce this odor in a laboratory setting.