
Nasa Open Datasets - squiggy22
https://open.nasa.gov
======
toni
If you are purely looking for some beautiful datasets, checkout NASA's
Datacasting website[1]. They have a large RSS feed directory[2] with a lot of
data on earth science. They even built their own RSS feed reader[3][4] to
download and filter the data. And I think everything is already geo-tagged.

[1] [http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/)

[2]
[http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/feed_directory/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/feed_directory/)

[3]
[http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/download/](http://datacasting.jpl.nasa.gov/download/)

[4]
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/datacasting/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/datacasting/)

------
skram
Also check out
[https://data.nasa.gov/data?category=&search=&type=datasets](https://data.nasa.gov/data?category=&search=&type=datasets)
(linked to from open.nasa.gov) which all have consistent APIs -- so you can
write code once and re-use it as opposed to having to write a new API wrapper
for each disparate data set

Disclosure: I work for the company that helps run data.nasa.gov

~~~
vijayr
Know of any interesting examples/fun projects where this data is used?

------
mturmon
It will be interesting to see how much uptake such a top-level index gets.

The search capability (e.g.,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264811))
returns so many results for typical naive queries ("temperature" returns
8300), that it's impossible to sift through them. They seem to be un-curated,
so a niche product with marginal calibration gets equal play to flagship
products with thousands of users.

People like me who use lots of this data every day have sat in panels and
workshops and mused whether a searchable top-level index would be useful,
because this is not how scientists work. They ask their friends which sources
are best for their use, e.g., which have the right coverage and sampling in
space, time, and wavelength. And they settle into something, and maybe make a
big shift to a new product when it comes online.

But: something _like_ this index could be helpful, to citizens, decision-
makers (e.g., tree canopy depth maps for fighting forest fires), and to out-
of-discipline scientists ("what if I brought in NASA sea surface temperature
to my analysis of beach restaurant revenue fluctuations?").

For CO2, here's an example
([https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov](https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov)) which gives 5 simple
use cases and sketches why you'd choose one over the other.

------
IanCal
First off, awesome, I'm always looking for new datasets. So these complaints
are fairly small, but currently stopping me from doing some things:

I can't see more than two items on this page:
[https://data.nasa.gov/data?&search=&type=datasets](https://data.nasa.gov/data?&search=&type=datasets)
I'm just after a big list of datasets so I can skim through and find ones I'm
intrigued by. Here's a screenshot:
[http://i.imgur.com/TtP630G.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TtP630G.jpg) (latest
Chrome, mac)

The featured dataset links to a 404 page:
[https://open.nasa.gov/nasadatanauts/](https://open.nasa.gov/nasadatanauts/)

Again, great to see the data out.

Edit - scratch the listing problem, it seems to be one of my extensions,
either readability or pushbullet, breaking the site.

~~~
rossj
It is great to see them releasing data, but I'm surprised they went with
something based on Socrata given there are other OSS products out there. I
can't imagine how much they paid - I guess that won't be in the data catalog
anywhere :(

~~~
mistermann
Could you name some of the alternatives to Socrata, I really like what it does
and its interface but would prefer something free.

~~~
rossj
There's [http://ckan.org](http://ckan.org) (disclaimer, I work with this) and
[http://dataverse.org](http://dataverse.org) if you're more academically
minded. There are others, but hard to judge any claims of open-sourceness
without access to source code.

------
rmason
In addition to being a beautiful design I like how NASA is making use of
personas. As I've discovered in working with open data it isn't just
developers who are interested.

In Michigan mappers, citizen activists and journalists are drawn to it in
equal numbers with developers. Giving different views that allow them to get
what they're looking for is very powerful.

------
rocky1138
[http://www.skywatch.co/](http://www.skywatch.co/)

SkyWatch is doing something similar. If you're into this sort of thing, check
them out.

------
IndianAstronaut
Wow, this is hugely improved. Used to be lots of scattered files everywhere
with poor access and no consistency.

