Overview
The NASA APOD API requires a free API key that unlocks 1,000 requests per hour. You can also use the shared demo key DEMO_KEY, but it is rate-limited to 30 requests/hour and 50/day per IP.
Setup guide
Get your API key
- Visit https://api.nasa.gov/ and click Get Started to sign up for a free API key.
- Fill in your first name, last name, and email — your key is emailed instantly.
- (Optional) To use the demo key instead, use
DEMO_KEYas your API key value.
Add it to Ingest
In the Ingest UI under Connectors → NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), paste the API key. Ingest stores it in AWS Secrets Manager under the key api_key.
Mind the limits
Personal keys allow 1,000 requests per hour. The demo key DEMO_KEY is limited to 30 requests/hour and 50 requests/day per IP. HTTP 401 and 403 are fatal; 429, 500, 502, 503, and 504 are retried automatically.
Supported streams
1 endpoint are available out of the box. Each endpoint syncs into its own Iceberg table in Snowflake.
| Endpoint | Description | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| get_apod get_apod | – |
Authentication
- Auth type
- query_param
- Sent as header
api_key- Provider docs
- api.nasa.gov ↗
Performance & limits
- Rate limit
- 1,000 requests/hour with personal key; 30 requests/hour with demo key
Automatic backoff
Ingest throttles requests to the published rate limit and retries with exponential backoff on transient errors. You don't need to handle 429s, retries, or pagination yourself.