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☄️ NASA Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) Scraper

🚀 Pull near-earth asteroid data from NASA's NeoWs: name, hazardous flag, diameter, close-approach date, miss-distance, velocity.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-07 · 📊 30 fields per record · ~28,000 known NEOs · close-approach feeds + full catalog browse · hazardous flag, diameter, miss-distance, orbital data

The NASA Near-Earth Asteroids Scraper pulls asteroid data from NASA's Near Earth Object Web Service (NeoWs). Output includes asteroid name, designation, potentially-hazardous flag, estimated diameter (min/max in meters and miles), close-approach date, miss-distance (km, lunar, AU), relative velocity, orbiting body, absolute magnitude, and orbital determination data.

NASA tracks ~28,000 known near-earth objects with close approaches updated daily. The Actor offers two modes: a date-range feed (asteroids approaching Earth in a 7-day window) and a full catalog browse mode. Filter to potentially-hazardous asteroids (PHAs) only, or include all NEOs.

📋 What the NASA Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 📅 Close-approach feed. Asteroids passing Earth in a 7-day window.
• 📚 Catalog browse. Paginate the full NeoWs catalog of 28,000+ NEOs.
• ⚠️ Hazardous filter. Restrict to potentially-hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
• 📐 Multi-unit data. Diameter in meters/km/miles, velocity in km/s and km/h, miss-distance in km/lunar/AU.
• 🔬 Orbital data. Orbit determination, observation count, first/last observation date.

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering and fresh data on every run.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

⚙️ Input

Example: asteroids passing Earth this week.

{
"maxItems":100,
"mode":"feed",
"startDate":"2026-05-01",
"endDate":"2026-05-07"
}

Example: first 100 PHAs in catalog.

{
"maxItems":100,
"mode":"browse",
"hazardousOnly":true
}

📊 Output

Each record contains 30 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

📦 Sample records

✨ Why choose this Actor

📈 How it compares to alternatives

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Find the NASA Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

💼 Business use cases

🔌 Automating NASA Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick mode (feed for date range or browse for full catalog). The Actor calls NASA's NeoWs API and emits one record per asteroid.

⚠️ What is a potentially-hazardous asteroid?

An NEO with absolute magnitude H ≤ 22 and minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) ≤ 0.05 AU. The Actor exposes the NASA-computed flag directly.

📊 How many fields per record?

30, including name, designation, hazardous flag, diameter ranges, close-approach data, velocity, miss-distance, orbital determination, and JPL URL.

📅 What's the maximum feed date range?

NeoWs limits feed queries to 7 days. Use browse mode for catalog-wide pulls.

📐 What does diameter range mean?

NASA estimates minimum and maximum diameter from absolute magnitude and an assumed albedo range.

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Schedule daily for fresh close-approach feeds.

⚖️ Is this data free?

Yes. NASA publishes NeoWs under public-domain. The actor can use the DEMO_KEY rate-limited public key by default.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs.

🆘 What if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors. NASA's DEMO_KEY rate-limits at 30 req/hr; for high-volume runs, use the NASA_API_KEY env var.

☄️ Are comets included?

No. NeoWs focuses on asteroids. For comets, ESA and JPL Horizons offer alternative endpoints.

🔌 Integrate with any app

NASA Near-Earth Asteroids (NeoWs) Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets to Sheets

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), JPL, or any astronomical observatory. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.