George Aldrich: The Man Who Ensures Astronauts’ Health at NASA by Smelling
Sending an astronaut into space comes with extremely stringent requirements that most people can hardly imagine. From food and water to everyday necessities, everything must go through complex and sophisticated quality checks. Despite this, there remains an exceptionally quirky and manual evaluation: assessing the potential health hazards of items through… smell. This peculiar job is unique to NASA.
If George Aldrich, an expert at NASA, hadn’t shared his work on Reddit, it’s likely that very few would know that the American space agency has such an unusual position: a group specifically smelling items before they are launched into space.
Interestingly, Aldrich only needed a high school diploma to work in this role, and it turned out to be a great opportunity for advancement. After some time spent smelling items, he was trained by NASA to become a technician in the chemistry lab.
Today, he is a leading chemical expert at NASA, awarded the Silver Snoopy Sniffer for his more than 40 years of dedication, overseeing approximately 800 safety missions at the American space agency.
George Aldrich – known as the nose of NASA.
“I have been a chemical expert at NASA for 44 years,” Aldrich wrote in a recent Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit, describing his unusual career. “I mainly conduct toxicity tests on objects before they fly into space.”
“I am also a volunteer on NASA’s smell evaluation panel. We smell all items that are in the living area of the International Space Station, checking for unpleasant odors that could make astronauts nauseous, putting their performance and mission at risk [of failure].”
Yes, it is indeed a genuine and necessary mission. It’s far more important than you might think, not just because of some toxic fumes, but also because… can you imagine being trapped in the cramped International Space Station with a terrible smell?
On Earth, you might go crazy if someone cuts onions in the office or uses the bathroom without closing the door. But at least the air dilutes those unpleasant odors. In the space station and spacecraft, the air is even scarcer.
In fact, in 1976, the Russians had to cancel a space mission because the astronauts could not endure the bad smell inside their capsule.
Smell can affect the success or failure of a mission – just for fun.
But NASA anticipated this. They knew they had to test the smell of every object before sending them into space.
The smell evaluation process goes like this: five volunteers from NASA’s smell panel will smell each material and rate its unpleasantness from 0 to 4. If a smell exceeds 2.5, it fails the test.
“We don’t see what the objects look like before we smell them. I have to be almost blind. They don’t want us to have any bias [toward the object]. We are also not allowed to look at it after we smell it,” Aldrich wrote.
Before conducting the smell test, the volunteers are checked by a nurse to ensure they are healthy and their sense of smell is functioning at its best.
Typically, the items sent to the International Space Station have already undergone extensive calculations and tests. But sometimes, a material with an unpleasant smell slips through the initial tests. That’s why the noses of the volunteers on NASA’s smell panel play a critical role.
“Velcro straps, we tested them, and they smelled terrible,” Aldrich shares about a typical example.
“They had tested each component of the Velcro strap individually, so when assembled, they should have passed the toxicity and smell tests.
But when sent into space, one of the astronauts opened the strap, and it immediately emitted a foul odor. On a scale from 0-4, one person rated it a 3.6 and another a 3.8. It was unpleasant and horrifying.”
Aldrich smelling unlabeled chemical containers.
The smell panel at NASA was established after the tragedy on January 27, 1967. During a rehearsal for the Apollo-Saturn mission, a fire broke out, engulfing the spacecraft prototype and killing three astronauts.
This tragedy shook the United States, and to prevent it from happening again, NASA had to redesign the spacecraft.
As part of the redesign process, they decided to conduct thorough material tests. NASA’s first priority was to check for flammable materials. Smell testing was prioritized at number six.
Now, smell testing is still used for new materials intended for space, including spacesuits and EVA clothing for astronauts.
It seems that every nose in the world is the same, but Aldrich’s nose knows what will happen. Over his career, he has conducted more than 800 smell missions for NASA.
To honor Aldrich’s contributions, NASA awarded him the Silver Snoopy Sniffer, recognizing his efforts in ensuring flight safety.
Aldrich and his trainees.
Although Aldrich’s sense of smell may impress you, he didn’t start his career because of it. Aldrich said the profession chose him.
“I was really lucky to work in this position [at NASA]. My dad didn’t work there, and I never thought I was qualified,” he wrote on Reddit.
By the time he graduated high school, Aldrich joined a group of 5-6 people at the local fire department, also working on “sniffing” duties. There, he met the fire chief, who tipped him off about NASA’s program.
Aldrich recounted on Reddit:
He told me: “George, you’re 18 now, you’re young, join the smell evaluation panel for astronauts.” And that’s how I began my career in 1974.
As a member of the smell panel, you don’t work in a laboratory. But at the time when the NASA chemistry lab was looking for a technician, I said: “I have two years of high school chemistry and four years of math.“
They replied that I was qualified and they would train me. In 1978, I started working with a C-tech level, then B-tech, then A-tech; now I hold the highest position, a specialist.
When Aldrich started his career at NASA, he only had a high school diploma.
However, even as a specialist, there is one thing that Aldrich has never smelled in space: astronauts.
“Humans smell, but there’s not much we can do,” Aldrich writes. “They try to keep themselves clean with antibacterial substances. Due to the zero-gravity environment, they can’t bathe properly, which is also to conserve water. [So] humans always smell, haha, there’s not much we can do about them.”
