Air Products, a supplier of hydrogen, has announced it has completed the first fill of the largest hydrogen sphere at the NASA Kennedy Space Centre located on Merritt Island, Florida, US. NASA uses liquid hydrogen combined with liquid oxygen as fuel in cryogenic rocket engines.
To complete the fill, Air Products delivered over 50 trailer loads of liquid hydrogen – over 730 000 gal. in all – to NASA's new sphere. The NASA hydrogen sphere is the world's largest liquid hydrogen tank, measuring 90 ft tall and 83 ft in diameter. The hydrogen will be used to fuel NASA's Artemis missions, which aim 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 Apollo 11 moon landing to more recent missions to study Mars," said Francesco Maione, President of Air Products. "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 US space programme including Orion, the Space Shuttle, and Apollo, and reaching all the way back to the earliest Mercury programme 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 Centre in Mississippi, Johnson Space Centre in Texas, as well as Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama, US.
Astronautic applications are a key business for Air Products, and the company is also heavily involved in supporting the increasing number of privatised space launches and missions of several independent companies.