Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from Earth's nearest neighbours to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the make-up of the Universe.

Jupiter, says Marina Barcenilla, is "a bit like a stink bomb".

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has several layers of cloud, she explains, and each layer has a different chemical composition. The gas giant might tempt you in with the sweet aroma of its "poisonous marzipan clouds", she says. Then the smell "would only get worse as you go deeper".

"You would probably wish you were dead before you got to the point where you were crushed by the pressure," she says.

"The top layer of cloud, we believe, is made of ammonia ice," says Barcenilla, likening the stench to that of cat urine." Then, as you get further down, you encounter ammonium sulphide. That's when you have ammonia and sulphur together – a combination made in hell." Sulphurous compounds are famously responsible for stinking of rotting eggs.

If you were able to explore deeper still, she continues, you would encounter Jupiter's characteristic stripes and swirls. "Jupiter has these thick bands that are coloured. We think that some of these colours might be created by plumes of ammonia and phosphorus." There are also potentially some organic molecules called tholins, complex organic molecules related to gasoline. So, Jupiter, she says, may also have a note of petroleum "oiliness" with a blast of garlic.

Barcenilla is a space scientist, fragrance designer and astrobiology PhD student at the University of Westminster, London. In her early years studying the cosmos, she found herself constantly wondering, "what would that smell like?". Then she realised, "I have that molecule in my lab. I could actually go and create it".

So, alongside her academic work – searching for signs of life on Mars – Barcenilla has been busy designing scents recreating the odour of outer space for London's Natural History Museum's latest exhibition, Space: Could life exist beyond Earth?

From the stench of rotten eggs to the sweet scent of almonds, space is a surprisingly smelly place, she says. Comets, planets, moons and gas clouds would each have their own unique odour if we were able to sniff them with our noses. But what can these aromas reveal about the mysteries of the Universe?

Before we zip off to explore the olfactory delights of the cosmos, it is perhaps worth dwelling for a moment on what odours are in the first place.

Smell, though often under-appreciated, is arguably the most ancient of the senses. Take a tiny single-celled organism, a bacterium, bobbing through the Archaeozoic seas around 3.5 billion years ago. On sensing the presence of a chemical, perhaps a tasty nutrient or some danger to steer clear of, the bacterium's flagellum – its tail-like appendage – would act as a propeller, allowing this tiny creature to redirect its movements. To our earliest ancestors, this "most rudimentary sense of smell" was the difference between life and death.

And our own sense of smell is simply a more sophisticated version of this ability to detect chemicals in the environment around us. Our noses contain dense nerve clusters composed of millions of specialised neurons that are studded with molecules known as chemoreceptors. When they latch onto a chemical, they send a signal into our brains that is then interpreted as a distinct smell.

This sense of smell means we have the ability to the detect chemicals around us. For humans, smell not only helps us to identify foods or warns us of environmental hazards, it also triggers memories and plays a crucial role in social communication. After millions of years of evolution, the ability to smell is intrinsically linked to our emotional wellbeing.

During the long, isolated months in orbit, it can also be an important link to home for astronauts. But a space station can also be a strange place when it comes to odours too.

"Alexei Leonov [the first person to complete a space walk] was in charge of all the foreign astronauts," says Helen Sharman, the UK's........

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