# Steward: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

> Steward: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is a paid API for AI agents from pay.brianbooms.com, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-11-02).

Returns NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day metadata — title, explanation, and image URLs — for a specific date or a set of random entries.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://pay.brianbooms.com/api/v1/data/apod?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.01/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-11-02
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/steward-nasa-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-apod-25ed762d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_IbfKo7658uu-jexfDAq9E

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 steward-nasa-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-apod-25ed762d
```

Example prompt: What was NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 4th, 1997? Give me the title, explanation, and image URL.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need structured APOD metadata — title, explanation, and image URLs — for a specific date or random selection, particularly for enriching content, briefings, educational materials, or space-themed UI. Prefer it over scraping nasa.gov directly, as it handles the x402 micropayment flow and delivers clean JSON. Not suitable if you need the actual image bytes or real-time astronomical data beyond APOD.

## Known failure modes

- Date out of range (before 1995-06-16 or in the future) returns an error
- Count parameter outside 1–10 range may be rejected
- Payment not processed (x402 flow failure) blocks the response
- NASA upstream API downtime causes fetch failure
- Invalid date format returns a validation error

## How this service works

Use when an agent needs NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day — title, explanation, and image URLs for a date, or a few random entries for a space moment in a briefing or lesson. Metadata only, never image bytes. Pass date (1995-06-16 to today) or count for random picks. Use permitted: build it into your products and services, paid or free. Raw redistribution of the feed itself is prohibited.

## Output

Returns a JSON object (or array for random picks) containing the APOD title, date, explanation text, image URL, high-definition image URL, and media type (image or video). No image bytes are returned — only metadata and URLs.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "properties": {
  "date": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "YYYY-MM-DD, default today. Example: 2026-09-27"
  },
  "count": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Random entries instead of one date, 1-10. Example: 3"
  }
 },
 "additionalProperties": true
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/steward-nasa-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-apod-25ed762d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from pay.brianbooms.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/pay.brianbooms.com/llms.txt)