"A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together."
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 uses it, is it data? No.
or The Theory of Change through Data Science
In english,
Given an earth-bound coordinate and a date range, return all available NASA imagery of that point.
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.
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.
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.
Given a keyword, return space sounds recorded by NASA or partners. Filter on audible cues like beats-per-minute or ultimately whether there is a human voice detected within the recording.
And why should we care?
(Now.)