NASA Technical Reports Scraper

Search the public NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) and export structured citation metadata, abstracts, authors, NASA centers, topics, funding identifiers, and public document links.

The Actor uses NASA's documented, first-party NTRS OpenAPI. It does not log in, bypass access controls, or retrieve NASA registered content. Results are ready for research discovery, literature reviews, aerospace intelligence, citation analysis, knowledge bases, and AI-agent pipelines.

What it extracts

Each dataset item represents one public NASA citation:

Field	Description
nasaId, recordUrl	Stable NTRS citation ID and public record page
title, abstract	Report title and abstract when available
authors, organizations	Deduplicated author and affiliation names
center	NASA center code and name
documentType, documentTypeDetails	STI type code and readable label
publicationDate, publicationNames	Publication date and journal/proceedings names
subjectCategories, keywords	NASA-indexed topics and keywords
reportNumbers, fundingNumbers	Report, project, contract, grant, and task identifiers
downloads, pdfUrl	Public original, PDF, and extracted full-text URLs
createdAt, modifiedAt, fetchedAt	Repository and scrape timestamps

Nullable fields remain explicit null, and list fields remain arrays, so the output shape is stable across runs.

Input

The default input returns 25 best-match public records for Artemis:

{
  "query": "Artemis",
  "maxResults": 25,
  "sortBy": "relevance"
}

For a targeted literature search, combine full-text search with NASA filters:

{
  "query": "thermal protection",
  "centers": ["ARC", "LaRC"],
  "subjectCategories": ["Spacecraft Design, Testing and Performance"],
  "publicationDateFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "publicationDateTo": "2026-12-31",
  "sortBy": "newest",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Retrieve exact known citations with citationIds:

{
  "query": "",
  "citationIds": ["20230002992", "20260001774"],
  "maxResults": 2
}

Supported filters include title text, abstract text, authors, organizations, NASA centers, subject categories, keywords, report numbers, funding numbers, document type details, and publication-date bounds. maxResults is the hard delivery and result-event cap. The Actor requests up to 100 records per NASA API page and deduplicates all results by NASA citation ID.

Output example

{
  "nasaId": "20230002992",
  "title": "Returning to the Moon: NASA's Artemis Missions",
  "abstract": "With Artemis missions, NASA will establish the first long-term presence on the Moon...",
  "authors": ["Parul Agrawal"],
  "organizations": ["Ames Research Center"],
  "center": { "code": "ARC", "name": "Ames Research Center" },
  "documentType": "PRESENTATION",
  "documentTypeDetails": "Presentation",
  "publicationDate": null,
  "publicationNames": [],
  "subjectCategories": ["Space Sciences (General)", "Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics"],
  "keywords": ["Artemis", "Thermal Protection"],
  "reportNumbers": [],
  "fundingNumbers": ["374409.01.02.02.02"],
  "distribution": "PUBLIC",
  "disseminated": "DOCUMENT_AND_METADATA",
  "downloadsAvailable": true,
  "pdfUrl": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230002992/downloads/Artemis%20Presentation.pdf",
  "recordUrl": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230002992",
  "createdAt": "2023-03-06T17:57:52.9886810+00:00",
  "modifiedAt": "2025-08-31T18:39:21.7150190+00:00",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-08-28T12:00:00.000Z"
}

The default dataset contains only report records. Runtime diagnostics are written separately to the SUMMARY key in the default key-value store, with data, partial, empty, or rejected status.

Pay per event

Event	Price	When charged
Actor start	$0.0005	Once when a run starts
NASA report record	$0.001	Once for each item written to the default dataset

A successful 25-result default run costs up to $0.0255 in events. A one-result run costs $0.0015. A valid search with no matches incurs only the start event. Apify platform behavior and any account discounts are shown in Console before the run.

Reliability and limits

The Actor calls NASA's public POST /api/citations/search endpoint directly and uses the public citation endpoint for exact IDs. It retries rate limits, server errors, timeouts, and network failures with bounded exponential backoff. Invalid searches and missing citation IDs are not retried indefinitely. Partial valid results are preserved, and skipped exact IDs are listed in SUMMARY.

NASA controls repository availability, metadata completeness, indexing, and download assets. A report may have no abstract, publication date, report number, or PDF; those cases are represented truthfully rather than fabricated. The Actor returns public metadata and URLs but does not download or parse PDF contents. The maximum supported delivery cap is 5,000 records per run.

Responsible use

Use the data in accordance with NASA's NTRS/OpenAPI terms, applicable law, and the rights attached to individual documents. Public availability does not imply that every linked work is free of third-party copyright restrictions. This Actor does not access NTRS registered content or request NASA credentials.

For support, include the Apify run ID, redacted input, and the SUMMARY record. Do not post account tokens or private credentials.