API  (ABBR.)  Application Programming Interface:

1. a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications that structure the interaction between the final application and basis data.

• "A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing building blocks.  A programmer then puts the blocks together."

Data

APPLICATIONS

What is the point of an API?  Why should we care?

An API is a structured way to engage with NASA data.  Without it, most data sets are effectively unusable by third-party developers -- the fixed cost of data wrangling is too high.  

If a data set is created in the woods and no one is there to use it, does it make an impact?

No.  And an API puts people in front of the data.

EARTH

Given an earth-bound coordinate and a date range, return all available NASA imagery of that point.

MARS

Given an instrument and date range, return all available Mars imagery along with a tag that describes whether the image is of the Martian landscape or of instrumentation.

APOD

Return the Astronomy Picture of the Day and all associated metadata for a given date, along with concept tags derived from natural language processing, cross-referenced with the INTERNET.

PATENTS

Given a search query, return all publicly available NASA patents that contain the search term along with concept tags from the official patent text, structured in a way to match the DOE and NIH patents.