Air Products has completed the first fill of what it claims is the world’s largest hydrogen sphere at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Kennedy Space Center located on Merritt Island, Florida.
The NASA hydrogen sphere is the world’s largest liquid hydrogen tank, measuring 90 feet tall and 83 feet in diameter. To complete the fill, Air Products delivered over 50 trailer loads of liquid hydrogen – over 730,000 gallons in all – to NASA’s new sphere.
The space agency uses liquid hydrogen combined with liquid oxygen as fuel in cryogenic rocket engines.
The hydrogen will be used to fuel NASA’s Artemis missions, which aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.
“Air Products has a long history dating back into the 1950s of working with NASA, and stretching from well before the successful Apollo 11 moon landing to more recent missions to study Mars,” said Francesco Maione, Air Products’ President, Americas.
“This hydrogen fill, which is Air Products’ largest ever for NASA, successfully demonstrates our ability to supply world-scale levels of industrial gases safely and reliably through our robust supply chain, so NASA can confidently continue its important work for future missions to the Moon and beyond.”
Air Products’ working relationship with NASA began in 1957. It has included supplying NASA with liquid hydrogen and other industrial gases to advance the U.S. Space Program including Orion, the Space Shuttle, and Apollo, and reaching all the way back to the earliest Mercury program missions.
In addition to supplying product for space launches, Air Products also has had a long-term relationship with NASA’s engine testing program at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Johnson Space Center in Texas, as well as Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
Linde is also capitalising on the space industry boom. It is set to build a new ASU in Brownsville, Texas, and increase capacity at its existing ASU in Mims, Florida, to support the growing industry.
Watch: Laurent Zenou, CEO at Novair Group, discusses the company’s oxygen generation technology and where this can be used within the space industry on gasworld’s recent Space and Industrial Gases: Supporting Life Beyond Earth webinar.
Watch: How much does the space sector account for helium demand?