Sierra Space Teams with Honda and Tec-Masters to Advance Energy Solutions in Space
Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company and defense tech prime that is Building a Platform in Space to Benefit Life on Earth®, announced a groundbreaking collaboration with Honda and Tec-Masters to test Honda’s high-differential pressure water electrolysis system aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The project, facilitated by Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser® spaceplane, marks a significant step toward enabling sustainable human life on the lunar surface and advancing clean energy solutions for both space and Earth.
Honda is leveraging decades of hydrogen fuel cell technology expertise to develop a regenerative fuel cell system, known as a circulative renewable energy system, that will continuously produce oxygen, hydrogen, and electricity. A key component of this is Honda’s high-differential pressure water electrolysis system; testing it on board the space station will verify the system’s efficiency and reliability in microgravity. Honda’s renewable fuel cell system is part of the company’s vision to provide advanced energy storage capable of supporting human life on the lunar surface.
Sierra Space will be the mission manager for Honda, working with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and NASA to transport materials aboard Dream Chaser to the space station. Tec-Masters, Inc., will be the technical payload integrator, providing its decades of experience in ISS payload integration and certification. Sierra Space recognizes the potential of this technology to revolutionize energy storage and utilization, not just in space but also as a scalable, renewable solution on Earth.
“The future of innovation in space is not only commercialization, but teaming arrangements between like-minded companies to advance technology we never thought imaginable in previous decades,” said Ken Shields, Sr. Director of Business Development at Sierra Space. “As we prepare for our first Dream Chaser mission to the International Space Station, this new collaboration with Honda and Tec-Masters is an additional proof point to the varied applications of our spaceplane to provide commercial transport to the space station and beyond.”
Dream Chaser, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, is uniquely suited for this Honda program due to both its ample cargo capacity (more than 6+ tons) and its capability to safely return critical payloads to Earth at fewer than 1.5g’s on commercial runways. This ensures the preservation of invaluable cargo upon return.
Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, is currently undergoing final testing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in preparation for its first mission to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Service 2 (CRS-2) contract.