🚀 NASA Space Intelligence — APOD & Near-Earth Asteroids with AI Discovery Scoring

Extract space data from NASA's public APIs — the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) and Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) — as clean, structured data with an AI discovery score on every item. It's the fastest way to turn NASA's feeds into a ranked dataset: pull stunning daily astronomy images with full explanations, and track asteroids passing close to Earth with size, speed, miss distance and hazard flags — sorted so the most interesting objects sit at the top. Export to JSON/CSV/Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

🛰️ What is the NASA Space Intelligence Scraper?

It turns NASA's open data into a structured, ready-to-use dataset. Choose how many Astronomy Picture of the Day entries and Near-Earth Asteroids to fetch, optionally filter asteroids by hazard status or minimum diameter, and it returns each item with full details plus a 0–100 discovery score that ranks the most noteworthy content first — so educators, media outlets, researchers and space enthusiasts get publication-ready data without writing API calls. Results from both feeds are merged and sorted by discovery score.

What data does it extract?

• APOD: title, date, full explanation, media type (image/video), standard URL, HD image URL and copyright
• Asteroids: name, NASA JPL URL and potentially-hazardous flag
• Asteroid size: estimated diameter (min/max, km) and absolute magnitude
• Close approach: date, miss distance (AU / km / miles) and orbiting body
• Velocity: relative velocity in km/s and mph
• AI discovery score (0–100) ranking how noteworthy each item is

⬇️ Input

Choose how much of each feed to pull and how to filter asteroids — all optional:

Field	Description
apiKey	Your NASA API key (free at api.nasa.gov). Defaults to DEMO_KEY (rate-limited)
apodCount	Number of Astronomy Picture of the Day entries to fetch (0–100; 0 skips APOD)
asteroidCount	Maximum number of Near-Earth Asteroids to fetch (0 skips asteroids)
hazardousOnly	Only include potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs)
minDiameter	Minimum asteroid diameter in km (0 = no filter)

Example input

{
  "apiKey": "DEMO_KEY",
  "apodCount": 5,
  "asteroidCount": 10,
  "hazardousOnly": false,
  "minDiameter": 0
}

⬆️ Output

Every item is one clean row (view as a table, or export JSON / CSV / Excel). APOD entry:

{
  "data_type": "apod",
  "title": "The Tarantula Nebula",
  "date": "2026-06-26",
  "explanation": "The Tarantula Nebula is more than a thousand light-years across...",
  "media_type": "image",
  "url": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2606/tarantula_1024.jpg",
  "hdurl": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2606/tarantula_4000.jpg",
  "copyright": "Space Telescope Science Institute",
  "service_version": "v1",
  "discovery_score": 95
}

Near-Earth Asteroid:

{
  "data_type": "asteroid",
  "name": "(2024 MK)",
  "nasa_jpl_url": "https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=12345",
  "is_potentially_hazardous": true,
  "estimated_diameter_km_min": 0.12,
  "estimated_diameter_km_max": 0.27,
  "close_approach_date": "2026-06-29",
  "close_approach_date_full": "2026-Jun-29 11:42",
  "relative_velocity_kps": "18.34",
  "relative_velocity_mph": "41023.5",
  "miss_distance_au": "0.0312",
  "miss_distance_km": "4668321.5",
  "miss_distance_miles": "2900782.1",
  "orbiting_body": "Earth",
  "absolute_magnitude": 21.3,
  "discovery_score": 88
}

💡 Use cases

• 🎓 Education & classrooms: pull the latest Astronomy Picture of the Day with full explanations for lessons, worksheets and slide decks — no NASA coding required.
• 📰 Media & social content: grab striking daily images and close-approach asteroid alerts (with hazard flags and miss distances) for newsletters, blogs and posts.
• 🔭 Research & analysis: export Near-Earth Asteroid data — size, velocity, miss distance and hazard status — to JSON/CSV for tracking and study.
• 🤖 App & dashboard data: schedule recurring runs to feed a space app, widget or dashboard with fresh, scored APOD and asteroid data.

🧮 How the discovery score works

A transparent 0–100 score tuned per data type. For APOD it weighs media type (video over image), recency, explanation length and HD availability. For asteroids it weighs hazard level (potentially hazardous = highest), size, how close the approach is and velocity. Both feeds are merged and sorted by this score, so the most noteworthy items appear first.

❓ FAQ

How do I get NASA space data? Set apodCount and asteroidCount for how many items you want, add optional asteroid filters, then Run. You get structured APOD and asteroid records, each with a discovery score, sorted best-first.

Do I need an API key? No key is required to try it — it defaults to NASA's DEMO_KEY. For higher rate limits, get a free key at api.nasa.gov (takes about five minutes) and paste it into apiKey.

What is APOD? The Astronomy Picture of the Day — NASA's daily featured image or video with a written explanation. Use apodCount to fetch several recent entries at once.

Can I get only dangerous asteroids? Yes — set hazardousOnly: true to keep only potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), and use minDiameter to filter by size.

Which asteroids does it return? Near-Earth Asteroids with a close approach in the upcoming window, including size, velocity, miss distance and orbiting body.

Can I skip one of the feeds? Yes — set apodCount or asteroidCount to 0 to skip that data type and fetch only the other.

Can I run it on a schedule or via API? Yes — schedule recurring runs in Apify, call it via the API/SDK, or connect it to Make, Zapier or n8n to push fresh space data into your stack automatically.

Is this legal to use? Yes — it reads NASA's official, publicly available open data APIs. Use it responsibly and follow NASA's API terms and applicable laws.

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Keywords: NASA scraper, NASA API, APOD, Astronomy Picture of the Day, Near-Earth asteroids, NeoWs, asteroid tracking, potentially hazardous asteroids, space data API, astronomy data, space education, planetary defense, close approach asteroids, space intelligence, NASA open data.