# ForgeMesh APOD — Astronomy Picture of the Day

> ForgeMesh APOD — Astronomy Picture of the Day is a paid API for AI agents from x402.forgemesh.io, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Returns NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (title, explanation, media type, and image/video URL) as normalized JSON, optionally for any date back to mid-1995.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://x402.forgemesh.io/apod
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-apod-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-459b52f6
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_vLG8XrQf02X2IhHvqTGWx

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability forgemesh-apod-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-459b52f6 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: What was NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 20 1969? Give me the title, the explanation, and the image URL.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need a normalized, ready-to-consume JSON representation of the NASA APOD — including title, explanation, media URL, and type — especially for content bots, daily digest newsletters, space-education tools, or historical space-image lookups. Prefer this over scraping NASA's website directly, as it returns structured JSON with consistent schema.

## Known failure modes

- Date before mid-1995 returns an error (APOD archive starts June 16 1995)
- Malformed date string (not YYYY-MM-DD) returns a validation error
- NASA upstream outage may cause a fetch failure
- Future dates return an error (no entry exists yet)
- Rate or payment failure returns a 402 Payment Required error

## How this service works

The daily featured astronomy image or video, with title, explanation text, media type, and image URL, as normalized JSON. Optional date param for any day back to mid-1995. For content agents, daily-digest bots, and space-education tools.

## Output

A normalized JSON object containing the APOD title, explanation text, media type (image or video), the media URL, and the date — ready to embed in a newsletter, display in an app, or use in a space-education bot.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "date": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Date to fetch, YYYY-MM-DD. Omit for today's picture."
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "data": {
   "url": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2607/ngc300_1024.jpg",
   "date": "2026-07-16",
   "hdurl": "https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2607/ngc300.jpg",
   "title": "NGC 300: A Cosmic Gemstone with Stars and Gas Clouds",
   "media_type": "image",
   "explanation": "This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300..."
  },
  "attribution": "NASA APOD (public domain)"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-apod-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-459b52f6/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from x402.forgemesh.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/x402.forgemesh.io/llms.txt)