Smell is not a construct in space. What they smell is various chemical interactions with the nitrox they use for air in habitation modules. It’s all just elemental interactions with air. You can’t smell anything in space. There’s no breathable atmosphere. It’s the lack of pressure not the lack of oxygen that would kill you.
“Smell is not a construct in space. What they smell is various chemical interactions with the nitrox they use for air in habitation modules.”
But would it smell if you gathered what elemental particles that are floating around out there onto an external medium? Like smoke smell collecting into fabrics? Could the elements then have an odor that could be smelled from off the medium?
If you applied a common odor to a surface, stuck it out into space for several hours, and then brought it back into a normal oxygen atmospheric environment would that odor still be on that surface?