Perfumes - Space Scents

more The ASTROCULTURETM plant growth chamber.

In low gravity, said Mookherjee, the rose actually produced fewer volatiles than it did on Earth. But the fragrance that it did generate was critically altered. The flower in space had a more "floral rose aroma," which is aesthetically pleasing.

And, no, the astronauts didn't just sniff the flower.

To collect the scent, they reached into the ASTROCULTURE^TM chamber and touched the rose using a tiny silicon fiber. Less than one centimetre long, and only 1 to 2 millimetres in diameter, the fiber was coated with a special liquid to which molecules around the flower petal adhere. After the shuttle returned to Earth, IFF researchers took the fiber and analysed the molecules they found on it.

"We identify the constituents, we know the quantity, and then we can synthesize [the fragrance] here in the lab," explained Mookherjee. The fragrance of a rose is made up of nearly 200 different compounds, he added.

Credit: International Flavours& Fragrances A lab technician demonstrates the use of a silicon fiber to collect scent-molecules from a rose.

The rose was sampled four times throughout the STS-95 shuttle mission. Each time, says Mookherjee, they got a different result. The scent that they finally arrived at was the average of those samplings, and the new fragrance has since been incorporated into "Zen", a perfume produced by the Japanese company Shiseido.

The collaboration between IFF and WCSAR will continue on STS-107, a shuttle mission slated for launch in January 2003. This time the plan is to send up two different plants - a rose and an Asian rice flower - again placed in the ASTROCULTURE^TM facility. Like Romeo and Juliet, the flowers will touch each other. This as well as the low gravity, said Mookherjee, will alter the molecules they emit.

The ability to do research in space, concluded Mookherjee, gives a whole new dimension to the field of fragrance studies. "It's a fantastic opportunity," he said ...one that the Bard himself might have appreciated.