MCP For Claude Marketplace
Earth Snapshot

Earth Snapshot MCP Connector for Claude

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Render satellite imagery of any place on any day — NASA Worldview layers for true colour, active fires, aerosols and land surface, keyless.

5 tools Official Updated Oct 1, 2026 Official Vinkius Partner
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Connect any AI agent to on-demand satellite imagery of Earth — NASA's Worldview snapshot service renders any published layer, over any region, on any day, as a JPEG URL that never expires. No key required.

What you can do

  • Browse the imagery themes — true and false colour, fires and thermal anomalies, aerosols and air, land surface
  • Find the right layer — VIIRS, MODIS, Landsat, GOES and Aqua layer ids with their instruments and date ranges, resolved from a search phrase as well as an exact id
  • Render a snapshot — any layer over a region given as lat/lon plus span, or as a bounding box, at up to 2000 px
  • Stack two layers — fires or aerosol detections drawn over a true-colour underlay, the classic way to see what is burning against what it looks like
  • Find active fires — VIIRS 375 m thermal anomaly points over a region, without needing a fire-specific API key

Why it matters

This is the tool for "what did it look like then". Wildfire extent, smoke plumes crossing continents, snow cover, vegetation green-up and burn scars are all visible in layers that go back to 2000. Every request is checked against the layer's published date range — an out-of-range day renders a blank image rather than an error, so the tool refuses it instead.

satellite-imagerynasaworldviewmodisviirswildfireaerosolremote-sensingearth-observationtrue-color

5 tools expose this connector's capabilities to your AI agent.

find_active_fires

A detection frame with no coloured points means no hot pixels that day — not a failed render. Fires are best seen on the day they burn; the burn scar shows for weeks afterwards in true colour. Render the active fire detections over a region on a date — VIIRS 375 m thermal anomaly points, alone and overlaid on true-colour satellite imagery, keyless

get_layer_details

Accepts a layer id or a search phrase like "aerosol" or "night lights"; returns the best match. Get the details of one NASA Worldview layer — title, instrument, date range and projections — plus a small sample snapshot URL

get_earth_snapshot

The image renders on request from the URL, which never expires. An overlay layer can be stacked on top — the classic pairing is true colour underneath with fires or aerosol on top. Out-of-range dates are rejected rather than rendered blank. Render a satellite image of a place on a date — a NASA Worldview snapshot URL for any layer, any region, any day the layer was published

list_imagery_categories

The categories cover the physical questions people ask of imagery: what it looks like, what is burning, what is in the air, and what is on the ground. List the themes of satellite imagery available — true colour, fires and thermal anomalies, aerosols and air, land surface — with what each one shows

list_imagery_layers

The date range matters: some layers are recent, and a few are discontinued — an id whose end date has passed cannot render after it. List the satellite imagery layers in one theme — NASA Worldview layer ids with their titles, instruments and the dates each one covers

See how to talk to your AI agent using Earth Snapshot.

Show me a satellite view of the New York area on September 1st, 2026.

MODIS Terra's Corrected Reflectance (True Color) — the natural look of the day, published continuously since February 2000. Over 8 degrees centred on 40.7N, 74W, that is a box from 36.7N to 44.7N and 78W to 70W, rendered at 800x800 px: https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/api/v1/snapshot?REQUEST=GetSnapshot&LAYERS=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&CRS=EPSG%3A4326&TIME=2026-09-01&BBOX=36.70%2C-78.00%2C44.70%2C-70.00&FORMAT=image%2Fjpeg&WIDTH=800&HEIGHT=800 — a 116 KB JPEG. For a sharper daily frame, the same view exists from VIIRS on Suomi NPP.

Were there fires burning in the Amazon on September 15th, 2026?

Yes — the VIIRS 375 m thermal anomalies layer, Fires and Thermal Anomalies (Day and Night, 375m), published since January 2012, shows active fire pixels across the box from 13S to 3S and 65W to 55W: https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/api/v1/snapshot?REQUEST=GetSnapshot&LAYERS=VIIRS_SNPP_Thermal_Anomalies_375m_All&CRS=EPSG%3A4326&TIME=2026-09-15&BBOX=-13.00%2C-65.00%2C-3.00%2C-55.00&FORMAT=image%2Fjpeg&WIDTH=800&HEIGHT=800 — coloured points over black. The composite draws those detections on top of true-colour imagery so the fires can be seen against the forest. A frame with no coloured points would mean no hot pixels that day, not a failed render.

How green is the Midwest farm belt right now?

The MODIS Terra NDVI rolling 8-day layer, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (rolling 8-day), published since February 2025. Over 12 degrees centred on 41N, 95W — from 35N to 47N and 101W to 89W — it renders at 800x800 px: https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/api/v1/snapshot?REQUEST=GetSnapshot&LAYERS=MODIS_Terra_NDVI_8Day&CRS=EPSG%3A4326&TIME=2026-09-01&BBOX=35.00%2C-101.00%2C47.00%2C-89.00&FORMAT=image%2Fjpeg&WIDTH=800&HEIGHT=800. Dense canopy reads bright green; harvested fields and bare ground read brown. Comparing that frame with one from a month earlier shows green-up and senescence directly.

No. This reads NASA's public Worldview services — the layer catalog and the snapshot renderer — which require no key or account.

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