NASA Open APIs
NASA Open APIs is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's unified, public developer portal exposing space, earth science, planetary, heliophysics, and bioscience datasets at api.nasa.gov. A single API key issued through api.data.gov authenticates the family of APIs including APOD, Asteroids NeoWs, DONKI, Earth, EONET, EPIC, Exoplanet Archive, InSight, Mars Rover Photos, NASA Image and Video Library, TechPort, TechTransfer, SSD/CNEOS, Satellite Situation Center, GeneLab, TLE, and the Vesta/Moon/Mars Trek WMTS services. Together with 617+ open-source repositories on github.com/nasa they represent one of the most comprehensive open federal API surfaces in the world. As a US federal civilian agency NASA's data and software products are generally in the public domain, supporting a global ecosystem of researchers, educators, developers, and citizen scientists.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles NASA Open APIs the way a machine reads it — 88 machine-readable artifacts across 34 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — NASA Open APIs scores 46.8/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
How we profile NASA Open APIs
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for NASA Open APIs. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 34
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
NASA Open APIs Album API
The Album API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for album.
NASA Open APIs APOD API
The APOD API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for apod.
NASA Open APIs Asset API
The Asset API from NASA Open APIs — 3 operation(s) for asset.
NASA Open APIs Asteroids API
The Asteroids API from NASA Open APIs — 3 operation(s) for asteroids.
NASA Open APIs CAD API
The CAD API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for cad.
NASA Open APIs Categories API
The Categories API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for categories.
NASA Open APIs DONKI API
The DONKI API from NASA Open APIs — 11 operation(s) for donki.
NASA Open APIs Earth API
The Earth API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for earth.
NASA Open APIs Enhanced API
The Enhanced API from NASA Open APIs — 3 operation(s) for enhanced.
NASA Open APIs Events API
The Events API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for events.
NASA Open APIs Fireball API
The Fireball API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for fireball.
NASA Open APIs Layers API
The Layers API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for layers.
NASA Open APIs Locations API
The Locations API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for locations.
NASA Open APIs Magnitudes API
The Magnitudes API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for magnitudes.
NASA Open APIs Manifests API
The Manifests API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for manifests.
NASA Open APIs Natural API
The Natural API from NASA Open APIs — 4 operation(s) for natural.
NASA Open APIs NHATS API
The NHATS API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for nhats.
NASA Open APIs Observatories API
The Observatories API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for observatories.
NASA Open APIs Patents API
The Patents API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for patents.
NASA Open APIs Photos API
The Photos API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for photos.
NASA Open APIs Projects API
The Projects API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for projects.
NASA Open APIs Rovers API
The Rovers API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for rovers.
NASA Open APIs SBDB API
The SBDB API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for sbdb.
NASA Open APIs Scout API
The Scout API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for scout.
NASA Open APIs Search API
The Search API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for search.
NASA Open APIs Sentry API
The Sentry API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for sentry.
NASA Open APIs Software API
The Software API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for software.
NASA Open APIs Sources API
The Sources API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for sources.
NASA Open APIs Spinoff API
The Spinoff API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for spinoff.
NASA Open APIs Stations API
The Stations API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for stations.
NASA Open APIs TAP API
The TAP API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for tap.
NASA Open APIs TLE API
The TLE API from NASA Open APIs — 2 operation(s) for tle.
NASA Open APIs Weather API
The Weather API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for weather.
NASA Open APIs WMTS API
The WMTS API from NASA Open APIs — 1 operation(s) for wmts.
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Open Collections 17
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Asteroids NeoWs API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA DONKI Space Weather API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Earth Imagery API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA EONET (Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker)
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Exoplanet Archive API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA GeneLab Search API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Image and Video Library API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA InSight Mars Weather Service API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Mars Rover Photos API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Satellite Situation Center (SSC) Web Services
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA SSD/CNEOS API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA TechPort API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA TechTransfer API
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA TLE API (Two-Line Element Set)
OPEN COLLECTIONNASA Vesta/Moon/Mars Trek WMTS
OPEN COLLECTIONScroll within the panel for all 17 ·
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Nasa Gov Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFeatures 25
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Scroll within the panel for all 25 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Nasa Gov Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
NASA Open APIs API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 4
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Examples 2
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Apod Getapod Example
EXAMPLESecurity Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for NASA Open APIs — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 9
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Scroll within the panel for all 9 ·
Documentation 5
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 8
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Access & Security 2
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 3
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 2
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 1
The organization behind the API
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