Air Products Successfully Completes First Liquid Hydrogen Fill of the World’s Largest Hydrogen Sphere at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
Industry newsTo 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 NASA hydrogen sphere is the world’s largest liquid hydrogen tank, measuring 90 feet tall and 83 feet 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’ 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.
Astronautic applications are a key business for Air Products, and the Company is also heavily involved in supporting the increasing number of privatized space launches and missions of several independent companies.