ISS Location API (Open Notify) website screenshot

ISS Location API (Open Notify)

Open Notify is a free, open-source project by Nathan Bergey that exposes real-time NASA and ISS data as simple REST endpoints. The service provides the current latitude and longitude of the International Space Station (updated every five seconds as the ISS travels at roughly 28,000 km/h), a count and roster of all humans currently in space across all spacecraft, and historical ISS pass-time predictions for any point on Earth. All endpoints are unauthenticated, return JSON, and are free to use without registration. The ISS pass-time prediction endpoint has been retired; the location and astronaut endpoints remain live and operational.

ISS Location API (Open Notify) publishes 3 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Astronauts API, ISS Location API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Space, ISS, International Space Station, NASA, and Location.

The ISS Location API (Open Notify) catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

ISS Location API (Open Notify)’s developer surface includes documentation and 11 more developer resources.

24.9/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 26/100 agent aware Heartbeat 0/100 dormant Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →
AccessFreeOpen⚡ Free to try
1 published contract
SpaceISSInternational Space StationNASALocationGeolocationAstronautsReal-TimeOpen SourcePublic APIsFree

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):
  • MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
  • Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
  • Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
  • A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
  • Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
  • Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)
6 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.
Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):
Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/iss-api/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/iss-api to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

MarketPositionDepthRegistered MCP serverDeclares compatibility
Space and Satellite (operators, earth observation, ground segment) undeclared - - -

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

People in Space Right Now

Returns a JSON object containing the total count of humans currently in space and an array of crew member objects, each with the person's name and the spacecraft they are aboard...

ISS Location API (Open Notify) Astronauts API

Endpoints for retrieving information about humans currently in space

ISS Location API (Open Notify) ISS Location API

Endpoints for retrieving the current position of the International Space Station

Open Collections 2

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

ISS Location API (Open Notify) pricing

Not yet checked against ISS Location API (Open Notify)'s own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-06-13; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

PlanPrice
Free free Free

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against ISS Location API (Open Notify)'s documentation. Rate-limit details →

Billed by: request · FinOps profile →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Iss Api Plans

1 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Iss Api Rate Limits

2 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

context Context

0 classes · 9 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

ISS Location API (Open Notify) — jsonschema rules

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Astronauts Response

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

ISS Location Response

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 2

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Astronauts Response

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Iss Location Response

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Iss Api Domain Security

no transport/DNS hardening detected

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Iss Api Agentic Access

4 operations

4 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: iss-api
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/iss-api/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: ISS Location API (Open Notify)
kind: API
description: Open Notify is a free, open-source project by Nathan Bergey that exposes real-time NASA and ISS data as simple
  REST endpoints. The service provides the current latitude and longitude of the International Space Station (updated every
  five seconds as the ISS travels at roughly 28,000 km/h), a count and roster of all humans currently in space across all
  spacecraft, and historical ISS pass-time predictions for any point on Earth. All endpoints are unauthenticated, return JSON,
  and are free to use without registration. The ISS pass-time prediction endpoint has been retired; the location and astronaut
  endpoints remain live and operational.
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - open-notify/open-notify-api
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: false
  callable_host: true
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: open
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Free · Open access
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/iss-api.png
tags:
- Space
- ISS
- International Space Station
- NASA
- Location
- Geolocation
- Astronauts
- Real-Time
- Open Source
- Public APIs
- Free
tags_raw:
- Space
- ISS
- International Space Station
- NASA
- Location
- Geolocation
- Astronauts
- Real-Time
- Open Source
- Public API
- Free
- Open-Source
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: iss-api:astronauts-in-space
  name: People in Space Right Now
  description: Returns a JSON object containing the total count of humans currently in space and an array of crew member objects,
    each with the person's name and the spacecraft they are aboard. Covers all crewed spacecraft, not only the ISS. Requires
    no parameters or authentication.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/People-In-Space/
  baseURL: http://api.open-notify.org
  tags:
  - Astronauts
  - Crew
  - People in Space
  - ISS
  - Real-Time
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/People-In-Space/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API
  contact:
  - FN: Open Notify
    url: http://open-notify.org/
- aid: iss-api:iss-api-astronauts-api
  name: ISS Location API (Open Notify) Astronauts API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving information about humans currently in space
  humanURL: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/ISS-Location-Now/
  baseURL: http://api.open-notify.org
  tags:
  - Astronauts
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/iss-api-astronauts-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/ISS-Location-Now/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API
- aid: iss-api:iss-api-iss-location-api
  name: ISS Location API (Open Notify) ISS Location API
  description: Endpoints for retrieving the current position of the International Space Station
  humanURL: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/ISS-Location-Now/
  baseURL: http://api.open-notify.org
  tags:
  - ISS Location
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/iss-api-iss-location-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/ISS-Location-Now/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/iss-api-plans.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/iss-api-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/iss-api-finops.yml
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API/issues
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/iss-api-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/iss-api-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: http://open-notify.org/
- type: Documentation
  url: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/open-notify
- type: ReadTheDocs
  url: https://open-notify-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/open-notify/Open-Notify-API/blob/master/LICENSE
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

ISS Location API (Open Notify) — frequently asked questions

Does ISS Location API (Open Notify) have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 3 APIs from ISS Location API (Open Notify), including People in Space Right Now, ISS Location API (Open Notify) Astronauts API and ISS Location API (Open Notify) ISS Location API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the ISS Location API (Open Notify)?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 2 OpenAPI specifications for ISS Location API (Open Notify), each linked for download from this page.

How much does the ISS Location API (Open Notify) cost?

APIs.io lists 1 pricing plan for ISS Location API (Open Notify), with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the ISS Location API (Open Notify) ready for AI agents?

ISS Location API (Open Notify) has a Kin Score of 24.9 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 25.5 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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