NASA Image Library Research — tool reference

Server URL: https://toolcargo.com/mcp/nasa-images · Scope: connector:nasa-images. Activate Site Audit free and connect with ToolCargo OAuth or a scoped API key. No NASA account, provider key or paid provider. Each successful operation uses one shared-plan call, including cached results.

nasa_search_images

{ "query": "Apollo 11", "center": "JSC", "yearStart": 1969, "yearEnd": 1969, "limit": 5 }

Use a human query of 1–200 characters. ToolCargo trims and normalizes whitespace and Unicode, disclosing normalization. Source free-text matching is not guaranteed literal matching or translation. Optional ASCII center code and years from 1900 through the current year narrow the source query. Image-only results retain canonical NASA IDs, source links and recorded credits. Search ranking is not visual inspection.

Pass nextCursor with unchanged query, center, years and limit for another explicit page. Limit 1–10, up to source page 1000. Source pointers are validated and reconstructed as HTTPS requests; links are not followed. Ordering and reported hit counts can change, so these are mutable pages rather than a snapshot or exhaustive inventory.

nasa_image_record

{ "nasaId": "as11-40-5874" }

Inspect an ID returned by search, including observed IDs with ASCII spaces. Surrounding whitespace is trimmed and disclosed; ASCII case-insensitive exact matching preserves requested ID and canonical source spelling with identityMatch. Partial, wildcard, ambiguous or mismatched identities fail. not_indexed means no image record was indexed for that exact ID at observation time; it does not prove no asset exists elsewhere.

dateCreated retains the source field and is not a guaranteed photograph capture, event or upload date. Recorded photographer and secondary creator may differ from center and may include multiple parties. Missing credits stay missing; they are not inferred from description or publishing center. Full embedded metadata is not fetched.

Descriptions and credits are inert plain text; HTML and embedded instructions are never executed. Titles are capped at 500 characters, descriptions at 4,000, credits and location at 500, and keywords at 30 entries of 120 characters. Missing and truncation signals accompany fields. At most five validated image rendition pointers from the fixed NASA asset host are returned as inert source data. Width, height and bytes remain null when absent; no MIME or file-version claims are inferred. Pointers are never fetched or previewed.

Source disclosure and output authorship

ToolCargo includes indexed metadata from the NASA Image and Video Library. sourceLibrary identifies that source; projectionBy: ToolCargo identifies this projection. NASA has not reviewed or endorsed it and is not responsible for generated AI output. Preserve recorded creator credits as source metadata. Attribute AI-generated summaries to the AI product, without presenting them as NASA-authored statements. This connector does not use NASA insignia, train models, generate images or download media.

Review restrictions before image reuse

reuseStatus is always not_assessed and recordedLicense remains null. Public NASA indexing, general US copyright guidance or missing restrictions do not establish clearance. Third-party copyright, identifiable-person rights, marks, endorsements and commercial-use restrictions may apply. Review the source record and current media guidelines before reuse; ToolCargo does not produce a verified credit line or grant permission.

Provider and freshness

Only public image-search JSON from images-api.nasa.gov is fetched, using an identifying support contact, shared in-flight lease and minimum spacing, provider-directed cooldown, a 15-second timeout and 2 MB response cap. Errors are not retried or converted into indexed absence. No assets, manifests, metadata files, linked pages, arbitrary origins, accounts or credentials are fetched. NASA receives query, filter, ID and page parameters; ToolCargo credentials are not forwarded. No upstream numeric quota or availability guarantee is claimed.

Projected metadata can be cached in one running instance for at most five minutes, reduced by source max-age, Age and processing time. No-store, no-cache, private, missing or malformed cache metadata disables caching. Storage is bounded to fifty entries of 50 KB each. fetchedAt and cacheHit expose observation and reuse; this is not an archive.

Primary sources: Image Library API documentation · NASA API catalogue · NASA media usage and AI applications guidance.