Nasa

"Was there a coronal mass ejection this week?" / "is a CME heading for Earth?" — coronal mass ejections catalogued by NASA DONKI, the space-weather event database run by NASA's Community Coordinated Modeling Center. AUTHORITATIVE for CME occurrence and geometry: returns each eruption's start time, the instruments that saw it, the analysts' note describing the source region, and for analysed events the modelled speed in km/s, the direction (latitude/longitude on the solar disk), half-angle width and whether the analysis is the most accurate available. A CME is the thing that causes an aurora or a satellite drag event two or three days later, so speed plus direction is what says whether it will reach Earth.

"Was there a geomagnetic storm?" / "will there be an aurora tonight?" / "how strong was the Kp index?" — geomagnetic storm events from NASA DONKI, each with the full series of observed Kp index readings and their timestamps. AUTHORITATIVE for whether Earth's magnetic field was actually disturbed, as opposed to whether a flare happened: Kp 5 is a minor storm, Kp 7 puts aurora over the northern US and northern Europe, Kp 8-9 is severe. Also returns the CMEs and shocks DONKI linked to each storm, so you can trace a storm back to the eruption that caused it.

"What is the current space weather forecast?" — the alerts, watches, warnings and weekly summary reports NASA DONKI issues to spacecraft operators. This is the narrative layer over the event catalogues: a human forecaster's text saying what happened, what is expected and what the impact is. Filter by message type (alert, watch, warning, summary) or by event class (CME, flare, geomagnetic storm, SEP, radiation belt enhancement).

Solar energetic particle (SEP) events from NASA DONKI — bursts of high-energy protons arriving at Earth after a flare or CME. These are the events behind radiation warnings for polar airline routes, astronaut EVA holds and satellite single-event upsets. Returns the event time, the detecting instruments and energy channels (e.g. "GOES-P: SEISS >10 MeV"), and the flare or CME DONKI linked as the source.

Get the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day with explanation. Optionally specify a date. Example: get_apod({ date: "2024-01-15", _apiKey: "DEMO_KEY" })

Get near-Earth asteroids approaching within a date range (max 7 days). Returns size, velocity, and miss distance. Example: get_asteroids({ start_date: "2024-01-01", end_date: "2024-01-07", _apiKey: "DEMO_KEY" })

"Show me photos from the Mars rover" / "Perseverance images from sol 1000" / "latest pictures from Mars" — raw images from NASA's Perseverance rover (Mars 2020), straight off the mars.nasa.gov feed. Filter by Martian sol and by camera. Returns image URLs at four resolutions, the sol, the UTC and Mars-local capture times, and the camera instrument. Keyless. Covers Perseverance only — Curiosity, Opportunity and Spirit have no live public image feed. Example: get_mars_photos({ sol: 1000, camera: "NAVCAM_LEFT" })

Get recent solar flare events from NASA DONKI space-weather data. Returns each flare's class (e.g. C4.0, M1.8, X1.2), begin/peak/end times, source region, and active region number. Use for "recent solar flares", "is there solar activity / a solar storm", space-weather questions.

Search the NASA Image and Video Library for images/videos of any subject — planets, missions, astronauts, launches, galaxies, etc. PREFER for "NASA photos of Jupiter", "images of the Apollo 11 mission", "pictures of a nebula". Returns title, description, date, NASA ID, media type, and a thumbnail URL. Keyless.