What does the Moon smell like? Like gunpowder, apparently. Only twelve people have walked on the moon, all of them American. Obviously, in their airtight space suits the astronauts could not actually smell the Moon, but moondust is clingy stuff, and plenty of it was traipsed back into the cabin when they returned from the Moon’s surface. They reported that moondust feels like snow, smells like gunpowder, and doesn’t taste too bad.

Moon’s surface. It also contains minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium. NASA employs a small team to sniff every single piece of equipment which goes onto its space flights. This is to ensure that no items which could change the delicate balance of the climate of the International Space Station make it on to shuttles. The idea that the Moon was made of cheese seems to date from the sixteenth century. The first citation from John Heywood says that the moon is made of green cheese.