🚀 Spaceflight News Scraper

🚀 Export space and astronomy news in seconds. Pull articles, blogs, and reports from NASA, SpaceX, ESA, NASASpaceflight, Ars Technica, SpacePolicyOnline and more, filtered by search term, source, launch, event, or date. No sign-up needed.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-15 · 📊 14+ fields per article · 📰 20+ trusted news sources · 🛰️ Articles, blogs, reports · 📅 Years of historical archive

The Spaceflight News Scraper pulls from the official Spaceflight News aggregator, the largest open catalogue of space and astronomy news. Each record carries the article id, title, full URL, hero image, source name, summary, publication date, author list with social handles, featured flag, and any linked launches or spaceflight events. The aggregator is the canonical "one feed for the entire space industry" used by enthusiasts, journalists, and engineering teams.

Coverage spans 20+ trusted news outlets (NASA, SpaceX, ESA, NASASpaceflight, Ars Technica, SpaceNews, European Spaceflight, Space Scout, SpacePolicyOnline.com, Spaceflight Now, and more) across three content types (articles, blogs, reports), with linked launches and events from the Launch Library 2 catalogue. Filter by source, search term, featured status, launch ID, event ID, or publication date and download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under three minutes.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Space-tech newsrooms, content aggregators, investor research desks, NewSpace startups, educators, podcasters, hobbyists, AI training-data teams	News-feed apps, mission timeline trackers, sentiment dashboards, launch-coverage roundups, RAG corpora for LLMs

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📋 What the Spaceflight News Scraper does

Nine filtering inputs combine in a single run:

• 📰 Content type. Articles, blogs, reports, or all three at once.
• 🔍 Search term. Free-text search across title, summary, and body (e.g. Starship, James Webb, Mars).
• 🏛️ News site filter. Restrict to a single source by exact name (NASA, SpaceX, ESA, NASASpaceflight, Ars Technica, SpaceNews and more).
• ⭐ Featured filter. Only return featured/highlighted items.
• 🚀 Launch link. Find articles linked to a specific Launch Library 2 launch UUID.
• 🎯 Event link. Find articles linked to a specific spaceflight event ID.
• 📅 Date range. Earliest and latest publication date filters.
• 🔃 Ordering. Newest first, oldest first, featured first, or recently updated first.

Each record includes the article id, content type, title, canonical URL, hero image, source name, summary, full author list with optional social handles, featured flag, publication and update timestamps, linked launches with provider names, and linked events.

💡 Why it matters: the space industry generates dozens of stories every day across 20+ outlets. Aggregating them yourself means writing a parser per source. This Actor delivers a single, canonical, structured feed across every covered source in under three minutes.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded space-news feed.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
contentType	string	"articles"	One of articles, blogs, reports, all.
search	string	""	Free-text search across title, summary, and body.
newsSite	string	""	Source name filter (exact match).
isFeatured	boolean	false	When true, returns only featured items.
launchId	string	""	Launch Library 2 launch UUID filter.
eventId	integer	null	Launch Library 2 event numeric id filter.
publishedAfter, publishedBefore	string	null	Publication date range, format YYYY-MM-DD.
ordering	string	"-published_at"	Sort order: newest first, oldest first, featured first, recently updated first.

Example: 50 newest Starship articles across every source.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "contentType": "articles",
    "search": "Starship",
    "ordering": "-published_at"
}

Example: featured James Webb stories from the past year.

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "contentType": "all",
    "search": "James Webb",
    "isFeatured": true,
    "publishedAfter": "2024-01-01"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: the source aggregates from 20+ outlets, each with its own publishing cadence. Some sources publish multiple times a day (NASA, SpaceNews), others weekly. The news_site filter requires an exact source-name match.

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📊 Output

Each news record contains 14+ structured fields with full provenance. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 id	number	28471
📰 contentType	string	"articles"
📝 title	string	"SpaceX launches Starlink mission..."
🔗 url	string	"https://..."
🖼️ imageUrl	string | null	"https://..."
🏛️ news_site	string	"NASASpaceflight"
📄 summary	string | null	"SpaceX launched 23 Starlink..."
✍️ authors	array	[{"name":"Adrian Beil","socials":null}]
⭐ featured	boolean	true
📅 published_at	ISO 8601	"2026-05-14T16:30:00Z"
📅 publishedDate	string | null	"2026-05-14"
📅 updated_at	ISO 8601 | null	"2026-05-14T17:00:00Z"
🚀 launches	array | undefined	[{"launch_id":"abc-...","provider":"Launch Library 2"}]
🏷️ launchProviders	array | undefined	["Launch Library 2"]
🎯 events	array | undefined	[{"event_id":1234,"provider":"Launch Library 2"}]
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-15T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample record

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
📰	20+ trusted sources. NASA, SpaceX, ESA, NASASpaceflight, Ars Technica, SpaceNews, European Spaceflight, SpacePolicyOnline.com, Spaceflight Now, and more.
🎯	Multi-dimensional filtering. Source, search term, featured status, date range, launch ID, and event ID combine freely.
🚀	Launch + event links. Articles connected to Launch Library 2 launches and events for cross-referencing with mission timelines.
✍️	Author metadata. Full author list with optional social handles per article.
⏰	Time-series ready. ISO 8601 publication and update timestamps plus a derived publishedDate.
⚡	Fast. Hundreds of articles in seconds, multi-thousand archive pulls in under a minute.
🚫	No authentication. Public Spaceflight News open feed. No login or registration needed.

📡 The Spaceflight News aggregator is cited by hundreds of space-industry apps, dashboards, and newsletters as the canonical structured feed for the entire industry.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ Spaceflight News Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	20+ outlets	Live per run	source, search, featured, date, launch, event	⚡ 2 min
Per-source RSS feeds	Free	One outlet at a time	Real-time	None	🐢 N parsers
Google News for "space"	Free	Mixed	Live	Limited	⏳ Noisy results
Commercial news APIs	$200+/month	Multi-source	Real-time	Many	⏳ License + onboarding

Pick this Actor when you need a clean, deduplicated, structured feed across the entire space-industry press in under three minutes.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the Spaceflight News Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a content type, optionally add a search term, source filter, or date range.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your news feed.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from sign-up to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📱 Media & Publishing Powering space-news mobile apps with one structured feed Aggregator websites with filtered topic streams Newsletter content sourcing across 20+ outlets Podcast research bundles per launch or mission	💼 Investor & Industry Research Sentiment dashboards on NewSpace IPOs Launch-cadence tracking for SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab Competitive coverage monitoring for Earth-observation startups Press-coverage benchmarks for satellite operators
🏛️ Policy & Government Monitoring SpacePolicyOnline.com for regulatory updates ESA and NASA agency briefings tracking Export-control news around launch providers Civil-space communications and outreach analytics	🤖 AI & Data Teams RAG corpora for space-domain LLM assistants Training data for entity extraction (rockets, agencies, satellites) Topic-classification benchmarks across blogs vs reports Knowledge graphs linking articles to launches and events

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🔌 Automating Spaceflight News Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Hourly or daily refreshes keep downstream news feeds in sync automatically.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Space-news data powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Media-studies analyses of space-news framing Reproducible studies with cited, versioned dataset pulls Communication coursework on technical journalism Open-data exercises on news aggregation pipelines	🎨 Personal and creative Personal "today in space" homepage feeds Hobbyist tracking of niche missions and rocket families Newsletter side projects for space enthusiasts Content research for space bloggers and creators
🤝 Non-profit and civic Educational outreach with curated topic streams Civic transparency around government space programs Investigative journalism on launch failures and accidents Open-source community-news contributions	🧪 Experimentation Train space-domain ML classifiers Validate news-tech product hypotheses with real data Prototype agent pipelines that resolve mission references Test dashboard concepts with live space-news feeds

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a content type, optionally add a search term, source filter, or date range, click Start, and the Actor returns clean structured records across every matching outlet.

📰 Which sources are covered?

20+ trusted space-news outlets including NASA, SpaceX, ESA, NASASpaceflight, Ars Technica, SpaceNews, European Spaceflight, SpacePolicyOnline.com, Spaceflight Now, Space Scout, and more. Use the newsSite filter to scope to one outlet, or leave empty for all of them.

📑 What's the difference between articles, blogs, and reports?

Articles are mainstream news stories from major outlets. Blogs are commentary or opinion-style posts. Reports are longer-form analyses or technical write-ups. Set contentType to all to pull every type in one run.

🚀 What is Launch Library 2?

The open catalogue of launches, events, agencies, and rockets that the news source uses to link articles to specific missions. Use a Launch Library 2 launch UUID in launchId to find every article covering a specific launch (e.g. Crew-9, Artemis II).

🔁 How often is the dataset refreshed?

The aggregator updates within minutes of stories being published. Every run of this Actor pulls live data, so your dataset reflects the current state at run time.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (hourly, daily, weekly) and keep downstream news feeds in sync.

🌍 Are non-English sources supported?

The aggregator focuses on English-language outlets. The news_site filter requires the exact source name as published.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

The aggregator publishes article metadata and summaries under open access. Full article text remains the property of each publishing outlet. Always link back to the original source and respect publisher copyright when republishing summaries or excerpts.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run still fails, you can inspect the log in the Runs tab, fix the input, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Spaceflight News Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• n8n - Self-hosted automation pipelines
• Pipedream - Event-driven workflow automation
• Airbyte - Pipe news data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh space-news stories into your product backend, or alert your team in Slack.

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🔗 Recommended Actors

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Spaceflight News, NASA, SpaceX, ESA, or any of the news outlets aggregated. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open news metadata is collected.