NASA API MCP server

NASA-MCP provides a simple way to access NASA's various APIs directly from Claude AI and other MCP-compatible clients. This integration allows you to retrieve astronomical data, space weather information, Earth imagery, exoplanet data, and more through the Model Context Protocol.

Installation Options

Installing via Smithery

For automatic installation via Smithery, run:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @AnCode666/nasa-mcp --client claude

Installing with uv

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or higher
• The uv package manager

Installing uv

On macOS and Linux:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

On Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Alternatively, install with pip:

pip install uv

For more detailed uv installation instructions, visit the uv documentation.

Setting Up with MCP Clients

Configuring Claude for Desktop

1. Navigate to Claude > Settings > Developer > Edit Config > claude_desktop_config.json
2. Add the following configuration in the "mcpServers" section:

"nasa-mcp": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
        "nasa_mcp"
    ],
    "env": {
        "NASA_API_KEY": "YOUR_NASA_API_KEY"
    }
}

3. Get a free API key from NASA's API portal
4. Replace YOUR_NASA_API_KEY with your actual key (you can use "DEMO_KEY" for limited testing)
5. If you have other MCP servers configured, separate each with a comma

Integration with Other MCP Clients

For other MCP-compatible clients like Cursor, CODEGPT, or Roo Code, add the same configuration block to their respective MCP server configuration sections.

Using NASA-MCP

Once configured, you can ask for various NASA data with natural language queries like:

• "Show me today's astronomy picture of the day"
• "Find asteroids that will pass near Earth in the next week"
• "Get information about solar flares from January 2023"
• "Show me Earth imagery for coordinates 29.78, -95.33"
• "Find exoplanets in the habitable zone"

The server handles all API requests and properly manages error responses, giving you direct access to:

• Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
• Near Earth Objects data
• Space Weather information from DONKI
• Earth imagery from Landsat 8
• EPIC camera images of Earth
• Exoplanet Archive database

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "nasa-mcp" '{"command":"uvx","args":["nasa_mcp"],"env":{"NASA_API_KEY":"YOUR_NASA_API_KEY"}}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "nasa-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "nasa_mcp"
            ],
            "env": {
                "NASA_API_KEY": "YOUR_NASA_API_KEY"
            }
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "nasa-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "nasa_mcp"
            ],
            "env": {
                "NASA_API_KEY": "YOUR_NASA_API_KEY"
            }
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect