What does space smell like? This perfume-making astrobiologist is trying to find out

As It Happens 6:34 What does space smell like? We asked an astrobiologist/fragrance designer

After a long career of creating designer perfumes, Marina Barcenilla decided to turn her nose to the cosmos.

The fragrance designer enrolled in university in 2015 to study planetary science. She was taking classes in astrochemistry — the chemical makeup of outer space — when she realized she could marry her two passions.

"Whenever I see something new, the first question is: I wonder what that smells like," she told host Nil Köksal.

"One day I thought: Actually, this molecule that I'm studying? I have it in my perfume lab. And this smell that I am imagining? I could actually create it."

Barcenilla is now an astrobiology doctoral researcher at the University of Westminster in London, England