Tell school-age space fans the story of hardware NASA has left on the Moon, on Mars and in deep space, and the science each piece made possible.
Read the official challenge on spaceappschallenge.org
The official resource list arrives Oct 28; the Moon side is far better covered by public imagery than deep space.
In order of how useful they are likely to be. These are suggestions, not the official resource list.
LROC Science Operations Center (ASU) for NASA LRO
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images, including featured close-ups of Apollo, Surveyor, Luna, Lunokhod and Ranger sites and recent spacecraft impact sites where hardware or its traces are visible. Strong material for stories about equipment left on the Moon.
endpoint https://lroc.im-ldi.com/images
NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive (Goddard)
Reference entries for spacecraft and experiments, with launch dates, mission outcomes and pages such as the Apollo landing-site list. A reliable fact source for stories about hardware left on the Moon and Mars.
endpoint https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/
NASA
Search API over NASA's public photos, videos and audio, with no key and open CORS. Good for mission artwork, historical hardware photos and game assets.
endpoint https://images-api.nasa.gov/search
NASA Solar System Treks (JPL)
Global LROC Wide Angle Camera image mosaic of the Moon served as standard WMTS tiles with open CORS, plus hundreds of other Moon Trek layers listed in the Trek API docs. A drop-in basemap for any lunar web app.
endpoint https://trek.nasa.gov/tiles/Moon/EQ/LRO_WAC_Mosaic_Global_303ppd_v02/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml
University of Arizona HiRISE team / NASA PDS
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images at roughly 25 to 50 cm per pixel, sharp enough to see boulders, rover tracks and landers. The PDS archive holds full-resolution RDR products and digital terrain models (DTM).
endpoint https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/
// No key, CORS enabled: works directly in the browser
const q = encodeURIComponent("Apollo 15 lunar roving vehicle");
const res = await fetch(`https://images-api.nasa.gov/search?q=${q}&media_type=image`);
const { collection } = await res.json();
console.log("hits:", collection.metadata.total_hits);
for (const item of collection.items.slice(0, 5)) {
const meta = item.data[0];
const thumb = item.links?.[0]?.href;
console.log(meta.nasa_id, "|", meta.title, "|", thumb);
}Matched by theme. Study how they scoped the problem.