
NASA Open APIs - danso
https://api.nasa.gov/index.html
======
danso
> _Each rover has its own set of photos stored in the database, which can be
> queried separately. There are several possible queries that can be made
> against the API. Photos are organized by the sol (Martian rotation or day)
> on which they were taken, counting up from the rover 's landing date. A
> photo taken on Curiosity's 1000th Martian sol exploring Mars, for example,
> will have a sol attribute of 1000. If instead you prefer to search by the
> Earth date on which a photo was taken, you can do that too._

So when do codebases for `strftime()` functions get extended to deal with
extraterrestrial timezones?

~~~
btown
Every string-formatting function must have a new prefix of "m" for Mars-
safety: msprintf, mstrftime, etc. An extra int argument must be included to
indicate whether to format in Martian or Earth sols. Clearly the addition of
this new argument will 100% future-proof the API against any other
modifications required as humanity expands into space.

~~~
iamtew
Wouldn't it be better to just add an argument for which celestial body the
calculation is being performed for? This would be more flexible in the future.

I guess this would work well for other bodies as well, like moons.

~~~
aaronem
...if you look up fast enough, you might just see the tail end of the joke as
it passes over your head.

~~~
cbd1984
Talking to yourself, there?

------
BillFranklin
> Sounds (beta)

> Sound exists in space. Sometimes. And NASA has released a series of space
> sounds via sound cloud. We have abstracted away some of the hassle in
> accessing these sounds, so that developers can play with the audio files.
> For example, a useful application would be an automatic filter to identify
> human voices in these audio files. For now, that would help identify
> content. Later, however, when we retrieve sounds from far-off planets, we
> can apply the filter to identify unknown human space colonies. That was a
> joke. Sort of.

[https://api.nasa.gov/api.html#sounds](https://api.nasa.gov/api.html#sounds)

~~~
ashmud
The entire document is written in a pretty informal style.

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splatcollision
Cool - data sets around Landsat 8, APOD, Near-earth Asteroids, Mars rover
photos, the NASA patent library, even historical audio recordings. Hope they
keep adding to it!

Wish they had something for the ISS for example - experiment feeds,
positioning, historical activity etc - or is that found elsewhere?

~~~
danielvf
There's this website (
[http://isslive.com/displays/index.html](http://isslive.com/displays/index.html)
) with amazing amounts of live data hidden behind a horrible UI.

For example, right now I can see that control gyroscope #1 is spinning at
6,601 rpm, drawing 0.67 amps, and have a vibration of 0.007Gs, with bearing
temperatures of 39.1C, and 35.8C.

I looked into snarfing the data at one point, and concluded that it was
doable, if a little painful.

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niftylettuce
Looks like they use
[https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)

------
vijayr
Very cool. Anyone has ideas on how this data can be used, what kind of
applications can be built with this?

~~~
sidmkp96
Hi, I just build a small Android app using the rover-photo APIs:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.siddharths...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.siddharthsrivastava.marsrovershots)

