Air Products, a supplier of hydrogen, has completed the first fill of the hydrogen sphere at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Kennedy Space Center located on Merritt Island, Florida. 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 (730,000 gallons) of liquid hydrogen to NASA’s new sphere, which is 90 feet tall and 83 feet in diameter, according to an Air Products news release. 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’ 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 has had a long-term relationship with NASA’s engine testing program at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Johnson Space Center in Texas, and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.