George Aldrich has worked at NASA for more than 50 years, currently at its White Sands Test Facility. In 2005, when ABC News visited the facility, his job was to smell the cork that NASA hoped to use in the space shuttle. He sniffed the cork and nodded in agreement. But not everything passes his test. For example, when Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, wanted to wear mascara on the spaceship, George rejected it because of its smell. As NASA’s chief sniffer, George spends his workdays sniffing everything from books, hats, and glue tubes to spaceships. His unique work has attracted considerable attention online.
This is George Aldrich, NASA’s current “Chief Sniffer,” whose job it is to smell every object before it goes into space.
He is commonly called ‘Nostrildamus’ 😅 pic.twitter.com/eGmorOaeIF
— Latest in Space (@latestinspace) May 27, 2024
In 2018, George hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit’s r/space group, where he wrote: “I’m the ‘Chief Sniffer’ and a volunteer ‘Nasalnaut’ for NASA. I smell objects before they go on manned space missions.” The goal of his work, he said, was to control unpleasant or offensive odors that could make astronauts nauseous and potentially compromise the astronauts’ productivity and mission.
“Astronauts could actually get sick from being exposed to unpleasant odors,” George said. Susana Harper, manager of NASA’s Nasal Laboratory, explained the process to the Science Channel by saying, “When we’re on the space station or in the space shuttle, there’s no other air. We don’t open the window and let in fresh air. What we need to do here on earth is to verify that we are not sending new smells up there. Because once they’re up there, they’re stuck there.” Even the faintest smell can linger in space for years and sometimes make astronauts nauseous.
The smell test was initiated after the Apollo 1 mission in 1967, when a fire broke out in the spacecraft during a launch test, killing three astronauts. Additionally, the Russians had to abort the mission in 1976 due to an unbearable odor in their spacecraft. That’s when NASA decided to do material testing, specifically in a 100 percent oxygen environment. Test #1 was to check for flammability, test #6 for odor, and test #7 was for toxicity, George explained in a Reddit comment.
Others in the thread asked George hilarious questions. u/rmshackleford asked how astronauts deal with the smell of flatulence in space, to which he replied that they don’t do anything about it and sometimes people just stink. Someone else asked, “What is your favorite scent in the world?” George replied, “I’m fine with no smell.”
In addition to George, the smell test is usually performed by a panel of four other volunteers. Each expert will perform a blind smell test on each material and item and rate it from 0 to 4. Anything above 2.5 will fail the test and will not be added to the list of items to be sent into space. In case sniffers have a runny nose, cold or sore throat, they have a nurse on site to come and check their nose before they come in and sniff. If they have a pre-existing condition, the nurse will not allow them to perform the smell test. “I have been tested more than 900 times; I think I failed twice,” George revealed in a Reddit comment.
Thanks to his odd job and perfect sense of smell, George appeared in Stan Lee’s “Superhumans”. He was also a guest on Inverse.com’s “I Need My Space” podcast and a recipient of the NASA Silver Snoopy Award for IFL Science. Nicknamed “NostrilDamus” and “Nasalnaut” by his team, the master sniffer also served as a judge in the Odor-Eaters’ Rotten Sneaker Contest. “My friends and family think I’m a bit crazy,” he joked when speaking to the Science Channel.