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Retrieve Near-Earth Objects (Asteroids) Within a Date Range

Source: R/get_neofeed.R
get_neo_feed.Rd

Queries NASA's Near Earth Object Web Service (NeoWs) to retrieve data about asteroids and comets approaching Earth within a specified date range.

Usage

get_neo_feed(start_date, end_date = NULL, api_key = "DEMO_KEY")

Arguments

start_date

Character. The start date for asteroid data in "YYYY-MM-DD" format.

end_date

Character or NULL. The end date in "YYYY-MM-DD" format. If NULL, defaults to 7 days after start_date.

api_key

Character. NASA API key. Defaults to "DEMO_KEY", but a personal API key is recommended.

Value

A data frame containing information about near-Earth objects, including name, close approach date, relative velocity (km/h), miss distance (kilometers), and estimated diameter (meters).

Details

The function calls the NeoWs feed endpoint at https://api.nasa.gov/neo/rest/v1/feed. Each asteroid's metadata is extracted into a tidy format for analysis. The maximum allowed range between start and end dates is 7 days.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Retrieve asteroid data for a 5-day period
neo_data <- get_neo_feed(
  start_date = "2024-04-01",
  end_date = "2024-04-05",
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY"
)
} # }