The moon smells like gunpowder according to astronauts who have set foot on earth’s nearest neighbor, and now the smell of moon dust has inspired a series of "scratch-and-sniff" art. Apollo 16 astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. used his experience of being on the moon to help designers duplicate the distinctive odor. Edinburgh Printmakers have developed the scent into a printable ink which is being used to create 300 limited edition moon prints. Sue Corke, apprentice printer at Edinburgh Printmakers said on the company website, that she liked the idea of creating a false memory. "Smell, place and memory are very closely linked. No one who sniffs our postcard from the moon is ever likely to go there," said Corke. "Yet now I hope this is a smell, similar to a freshly struck match, which will always remind them of it." Corke said they were kicking around ideas when they remembered reading an article on the NASA website and they really liked some of the descriptions the astronauts gave about the moon's smell. "It is described as a 'gunpowder' kind of smell, and as a lot of astronauts would have to train by firing and handling guns, we think that's a fairly reliable description." NASA has known about the smell of moon dust since the '70s (the substance would get on astronauts suits and they would track it back into the spaceships). Apollo 14 lunar module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell has speculated that the moon smells like gunpowder, possibly because of the composition of basalt rock from ancient lava flows on the side of the moon that faces Earth. "That's true. It's because, on the front side [of the moon], in particular, there's a lot more lava that has come out from internal volcanism on the front side, and that's what smells like gunpowder -- basalt rock," said Mitchell.