NASA Image and Video Library
Search NASA's media archive — 140,000+ images, videos, and audio from missions, telescopes, and research centers. No API key required, unlike most NASA APIs.
🟢 Online · 818 ms
100%
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
No key required
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does NASA Image and Video Library require an API key?
No, NASA Image and Video Library is freely accessible without registration or an API key.
What is NASA Image and Video Library's free tier?
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Is NASA Image and Video Library currently online?
We check NASA Image and Video Library every hour. The current status is shown at the top of this page. You can also see the 30-day uptime history in the chart above.
Implementation notes
When to use NASA Image and Video Library
The NASA Image and Video Library API searches 140,000+ officially released NASA photos, videos, and audio — Apollo missions, Hubble and JWST imagery, launch photography, astronaut portraits. Unlike most NASA APIs (APOD etc.) it requires no API key at all. NASA media is public domain, so you can use the images commercially without licensing. Use it for space-themed apps, educational tools, wallpaper generators, and as a spectacular demo dataset for teaching search UIs.
Common pitfalls
- The search response nests the actual media URLs one level deeper than you expect: search results give you a `collection.items[].href` that points to *another* JSON document listing the actual asset files at various resolutions. Budget for the two-step fetch.
- Media type filtering matters: without `media_type=image` you get videos and audio mixed into results, and video 'preview' images are sometimes missing.
- Public domain applies to NASA-produced media, but the archive includes some items with third-party rights (logos, people in non-official contexts). The `description` field flags most of these — worth checking before commercial use of a specific image.
Quick start (bash)
curl "https://images-api.nasa.gov/search?q=james+webb&media_type=image&page_size=5"Embed this badge
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Markdown
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