Consuming NASA API using Python — Part 1 | Daily Python #17

This article is a tutorial on how to consume the NASA API using Python. This is the first part of the NASA API series.

Source: https://nordicapis.com/api_profile/nasa-api/

This article is a part of Daily Python challenge that I have taken up for myself. I will be writing short python articles daily.

Sign up on the NASA API website: https://api.nasa.gov/. After this step, you will receive an API key via email. This API Key will be used for further communication with the NASA API.

Requirements:

1. Python 3.0
2. Pip

Install the following packages:

1. requests — Library to making HTTP requests.
2. pprint — Library for printing structures of data in a formatted way.
3. urllib — Library for handling URLs

pip install requests pprint urllib3

Let’s import these libraries

import requests
from urllib.request import urlretrieve
from pprint import PrettyPrinter
pp = PrettyPrinter()
pp = PrettyPrinter()

The ‘pp’ instance of PrettyPrinter will be used to beautify the JSON output.

Let’s store the API Key in a variable to be used in the program

apiKey = 'YOUR_NASA_API_KEY'

We will cover the following APIs in this article

1. APOD — Astronomy picture of the day
2. Asteroids NeoWs — NeoWs (Near Earth Object Web Service)
3. EPIC — Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera

Let’s start by writing a function to consume the APOD API

def fetchAPOD():
  URL_APOD = "https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod"
  date = '2020-01-22'
  params = {
      'api_key':api_key,
      'date':date,
      'hd':'True'
  }
  response = requests.get(URL_APOD,params=params).json()
  pp.pprint(response)
fetchAPOD()

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

Snip of the Output of the above code

Astronomy Picture for 23 Jan 2020

Let’s define functions to consume the Asteroids NeoWs API

There are 3 operations for fetching information of the Near Earth Objects.

1. Feed
2. Lookup
3. Browse

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

def fetchAsteroidNeowsFeed():
  URL_NeoFeed = "https://api.nasa.gov/neo/rest/v1/feed"
  params = {
      'api_key':api_key,
      'start_date':'2020-01-22',
      'end_date':'2020-01-23'
  }
  response = requests.get(URL_NeoFeed,params=params).json()
  pp.pprint(response)
fetchAsteroidNeowsFeed()

Snip of the Output of the above code snippet

Note: The above data can be used to study the path of the asteroids and their probability of impact with other Neos.

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

def fetchAsteroidNeowsLookup():
  asteroid_id = '3542519'
  URL_NeoLookup = "https://api.nasa.gov/neo/rest/v1/neo/"+ asteroid_id
  params = {
      'api_key':api_key
  }
  response = requests.get(URL_NeoLookup,params=params).json()
  pp.pprint(response)
fetchAsteroidNeowsLookup()

Snip of the Output of the above code snippet

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

def fetchAsteroidNeowsBrowse():
  URL_NeoBrowse = "https://api.nasa.gov/neo/rest/v1/neo/browse/"
  params = {
      'api_key':api_key
  }
  response = requests.get(URL_NeoBrowse,params=params).json()
  pp.pprint(response)
fetchAsteroidNeowsBrowse()

Snip of the Output of the above code

Finally let’s define a function to consume the EPIC ( Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) API

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

Source: https://api.nasa.gov/

def fetchEPICData():
  URL_EPIC = "https://api.nasa.gov/EPIC/api/natural/"
  params = {
      'api_key':api_key,
  }
  response = requests.get(URL_EPIC,params=params).json()
  pp.pprint(response)
fetchEPICData()

Snip of the Output of the above code snippet

Let’s save an image using the ‘image’ id we fetched from ‘fetchEPICData’

def fetchEPICImage():
  YEAR = '2015'
  MONTH = '10'
  DAY = '31'
  IMAGE_ID = 'epic_1b_20151031074844'
  URL_EPIC = "https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/natural/"
  URL_EPIC = URL_EPIC + YEAR +'/' + MONTH + '/'+DAY
  URL_EPIC = URL_EPIC + '/png'
  URL_EPIC = URL_EPIC + '/' + IMAGE_ID + '.png' 
  print(URL_EPIC)
  urlretrieve(URL_EPIC,IMAGE_ID+'.png')
  
fetchEPICImage()

Saved Image:

Source: NASA

I hope this article was helpful, do leave some claps if you liked it.

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