Space & Earth Science Explorer
Overview
Search space imagery, scientific datasets, earthquake activity, and earth observation records from NASA, NOAA, and USGS. Supports natural-language queries, source filtering, time period ranges, and returns clean, structured results for research, content creation, or analysis. All data comes from public federal APIs requiring no user credentials.
Actions
query_space_science_data
Search across multiple federal science data sources using a natural-language query.
Required Parameters:
action(string): Must be"query_space_science_data"query(string): Natural-language search query describing the data you want
Optional Parameters:
source(string): Filter results to a specific agency. One of"nasa","noaa","usgs", or"all". Default:"all"time_period(string): Time filter. Accepts"latest", a single year like"2024", or a range like"2015:2024". When omitted or set to"latest", no year filtering is applied (USGS earthquakes default to the last 30 days)limit(integer): Maximum number of records to return. Range: 1-100. Default: 20
Source Behavior:
"nasa"-- Searches the NASA Image Library for imagery and data.gov for NASA datasets"noaa"-- Searches data.gov for NOAA datasets (climate, ocean, weather)"usgs"-- Searches USGS earthquake events and data.gov for DOI/USGS datasets"all"-- Queries all three sources. The limit is split evenly across sources
Earthquake Magnitude Filtering:
Include magnitude hints in your query text using patterns like "magnitude >= 4", "mag:5", or "mag>=6.0" and the tool will automatically apply a minimum magnitude filter to USGS earthquake results.
Example -- Search NASA for Mars rover images:
{
"action": "query_space_science_data",
"query": "mars rover images",
"source": "nasa",
"limit": 5
}
Example -- Search NOAA for sea level data over a year range:
{
"action": "query_space_science_data",
"query": "sea level rise",
"source": "noaa",
"time_period": "2020:2025"
}
Example -- Search USGS for earthquakes with magnitude filter:
{
"action": "query_space_science_data",
"query": "magnitude >= 4 earthquakes",
"source": "usgs",
"limit": 10
}
Example -- Search all sources for solar flare activity in a specific year:
{
"action": "query_space_science_data",
"query": "solar flare activity",
"time_period": "2024"
}
Example -- Broad search across all sources with default settings:
{
"action": "query_space_science_data",
"query": "ocean temperature anomalies"
}
Response Format
Each result in the results array contains:
source-- Origin of the data (e.g.,"nasa_images","data_gov","usgs_earthquakes")kind-- Type of result:"image","dataset", or"event"agency-- Originating agency name (e.g.,"NASA","USGS")title-- Title of the image, dataset, or eventdescription-- Trimmed description (max 320 characters)
Additional fields vary by source:
- NASA Images:
date_created,nasa_id,preview_url,asset_manifest_url - Data.gov Datasets:
landing_page_url,resource_url,resource_format,metadata_modified,tags - USGS Earthquakes:
url,time,magnitude,place,tsunami
The response also includes an errors array listing any upstream source failures, allowing partial results when some sources are unavailable.
Suggested Workflows
- Research Briefing: Query with
source: "all"to gather imagery, datasets, and events on a topic, then compile into a summary - Earthquake Monitoring: Use
source: "usgs"with magnitude filters in the query to monitor seismic activity for a region - Climate Data Discovery: Use
source: "noaa"with time ranges to find datasets on ocean, weather, or atmospheric conditions - Space Image Collection: Use
source: "nasa"to find space and astronomy imagery for presentations or content
Notes
- When
sourceis"all", thelimitis divided evenly across sources (e.g., limit of 20 with 3 sources gives roughly 7 results per source) - Unrecognized
time_periodvalues are silently ignored (no filtering applied) - If all upstream sources fail and no results are returned, the tool raises an error with details about the failures
- The tool uses publicly available federal APIs and does not require any API keys or credentials







