NASA Software Catalog Lookup

Purpose

Look up software in NASA's public Software Catalog (software.nasa.gov) — either by free-text keyword (returning a ranked list of matching titles) or by canonical NASA case number (returning the full record for a single piece of software). For each hit, returns: case number, title, marketing/technical descriptions, NASA field center, category, release type, version, dates, and any external download URL. Read-only; never submits the "Request Software" form.

When to Use

• "Find NASA software for X" — keyword search across the full agency catalog.
• "Get details on NASA software LAR-18744-1" — direct lookup by case number.
• Programmatic monitoring for newly released or revised NASA software.
• Cataloging / filtering by NASA field center (Ames, JPL, Goddard, Langley, etc.) or by software category (aeronautics, propulsion, data and image processing, etc.).
• Anywhere you would otherwise scrape the rendered HTML — the JSON API is faster, structurally richer (24 fields per record vs. 4 in the rendered card), and has no auth, cookies, or anti-bot.

Workflow

The software.nasa.gov front-end is a thin client over a public Elasticsearch-backed JSON endpoint at /searchapi/multi/{center}/software/{offset}/9/{query}. No auth, no cookies, no rate-limit headers, no anti-bot Verified — plain HTTPS GET works from any IP. Page size is hard-coded to 9. Lead with the API path; the browser path is a fallback only.

A. Search by keyword

1. Get the total result count (one HTML round-trip — the API itself does not return a count).

   GET https://software.nasa.gov/search/multi/{center}/software/9/{query}
   

   • {center} — one of: aw (agency-wide / all), arc (Ames), dfrc (Armstrong), grc (Glenn), gsfc (Goddard), jpl (JPL), jsc (Johnson), ksc (Kennedy), larc (Langley), msfc (Marshall), ssc (Stennis).
   • {query} — URL-encoded keyword(s). Spaces → %20. Hyphens allowed.

   Parse total from one of (both present in the HTML):

   • <div class="searchCount">(\d+) Search Results for "..."</div>
   • Inline JS literal let total=<N>;

2. Fetch matching records via the JSON API, paginating by offset = 0, 9, 18, … until the API returns [] or offset ≥ total.

   GET https://software.nasa.gov/searchapi/multi/{center}/software/{offset}/9/{query}
   

   Returns a JSON array of Elasticsearch hits:

   [
     {
       "_index": "t2pd.software",
       "_id": "544057a42841f54dacba7027",
       "_score": 1,
       "_source": { /* full software record — see "Expected Output" */ }
     },
     ...
   ]
   

   The 24 fields in _source (e.g. case_number, marketing_title, marketing_desc, tech_title, sw_desc, category, center, release_type, sw_version, sw_url, release_aisc_date, revision_date) are the canonical record and are richer than the rendered card or the public detail page — you usually do not need step 3.

3. (Optional) Fetch the public detail page for a single hit if you need the rendered "Contact Us" email, the FAQ-formatted release-type explainer, or a visual screenshot:

   GET https://software.nasa.gov/software/{case_number}
   

   Returns server-rendered HTML; the <h1> is {marketing_title}({case_number}) and labeled rows under "Software Details" carry Category, Reference Number, Release Type, and Operating System. The detail page is strictly a subset of the JSON record — there is no information here the API does not already have.

B. Direct lookup by case number

If the user already knows the canonical case number (e.g. LAR-18744-1, NPO-50498-1, GSC-15016-1), do not use the search API — it does a fuzzy multi-field match on the case-number string and returns center-prefix-mates ranked above the exact match (e.g. searching LAR-18744-1 returns LAR-19278-1 as the top hit, not the exact match). Instead:

1. Hit the detail URL directly:

   GET https://software.nasa.gov/software/{case_number}
   

   • HTTP 200 with <h1>...({case_number})</h1> → exists. Parse <h1> and the "Software Details" rows for category, release type, etc.
   • HTTP 404 → unknown case number.

2. (Optional) Backfill the rich JSON record by extracting the marketing title from the <h1> and querying the search API with that title — the exact-title query lands the canonical record as hit #1 with all 24 _source fields.

C. Autocomplete (optional)

For "did you mean" suggestions on a partial query (≥ 4 chars), call:

GET https://software.nasa.gov/searchsuggestions/{partial}

Returns {"success": true, "data": ["trajectory", "trajectory optimization", ...]} (up to 10 strings) or [] if no matches. Useful for query expansion before the main search call. Returns [] for queries shorter than 3-4 characters.

Browser fallback

Use only when the JSON endpoint is unreachable (sanctions, network policy, or — extremely rare — the Drupal cache is misbehaving). The public search page https://software.nasa.gov/search/multi/{center}/software/9/{query} is fully server-side rendered for the first 9 hits (Drupal Views) — no JS execution required to read them. Extract:

• Per-result <div class="result"> block, each containing:
  • Case number: <a href="https://software.nasa.gov/software/([A-Z0-9\-]+)"> (also the anchor text)
  • Title: <div class="title">([^<]+)</div> (the marketing_title)
  • Description: <div class="description">([^<]+)</div> (the marketing_desc, truncated)
  • Release type: <div class="category">([^<]+)</div> (re-uses the category class but carries the release_type text — confusingly named)
• Total count: <div class="searchCount">(\d+) Search Results (also let total=<N>; in the in-page JS).
• Pagination via browser requires running the viewMore JS (document.querySelector(".viewMore").click() per +9 batch) — much more expensive than just hitting the JSON endpoint at the next offset. Skip the browser entirely once you have the count.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• The "obvious" search-API URL is a trap. The view-more JS embedded in the search page advertises /searchapi/software/{query}/software/{page}/9/ — that endpoint always returns [] for every query, every offset, every center (confirmed across multiple iterations 2026-05-18). The actually-working endpoint is /searchapi/multi/{center}/software/{offset}/9/{query} — note the segment order: {offset}/9/{query} is correct, not {offset}/{query} (the trailing /9/ is the page size and must be present — without it the query parameter is silently ignored and you get the unfiltered agency-wide pager). This was the highest-cost discovery during scaffolding; the URL inside the page's JS is stale.
• Query parameter is silently dropped if path shape is wrong. Any malformed variant of the path (missing /9/, wrong segment order, using aw in the query slot, etc.) returns the unfiltered top-9 of the catalog with HTTP 200 — there is no error signal. Always verify by submitting a query you know is unique (e.g. TPSSizer) and confirming the response shape matches expectations (hit count should be small for unique terms).
• No total-count in the JSON. The API only returns the slice of 9; the total is published in the rendered HTML page (class="searchCount" and inline let total=<N>;). Either fetch the HTML once at offset=0 to grab the count, or paginate blindly until you get [].
• Page size is hard-coded to 9. The /9/ in the path is the size and is not overridable — /10/, /100/, etc. all return {} (empty object, not an array) or []. Plan pagination in increments of 9.
• Empty / very-short queries silently return browse-all-9. q="", q=" ", q="x" all return 9 results sorted by the catalog's default order (ARC entries first), not an error. Validate the query is ≥ 2 characters before issuing the request and treat short-query responses as "browse" rather than "search-result".
• Direct case-number lookup via the search API is unreliable. Querying case_number strings does a fuzzy match on the prefix and ranks center-prefix-mates above the exact case (e.g. LAR-18744-1 returns LAR-19278-1 as hit #1). For exact-id lookup, fetch https://software.nasa.gov/software/{case_number} directly (HTTP 200 = exists, 404 = unknown).
• The category field on result cards is actually release_type. In the rendered HTML (<div class="category">) the value is the release-type enum (Open Source, General Public Release, U.S. Release Only, U.S. and Foreign Release, U.S. Government Purpose Release), not the technical category. The actual technical category lives in _source.category (lowercase) / _source.sw_category (title-case display). Don't conflate them.
• Field-center enum is closed. Valid {center} values: aw, arc, dfrc, grc, gsfc, jpl, jsc, ksc, larc, msfc, ssc. Unknown values return []. JPL's _source.center is JPL even though its case-numbers are NPO-* (legacy Jet Propulsion lab "Naval Propellant Office" prefix), not JPL-*. Don't try to infer center from case-number prefix.
• Category-browse pages are not server-rendered. https://software.nasa.gov/software/category/{slug}/{center}/{page}/ returns an empty results div — these pages depend on JS to fetch and render their hits. There is no public JSON endpoint for category-browse (only the keyword /searchapi/multi/.../{query} endpoint, which does not accept a category filter). If you need category-scoped results, either: (a) call the keyword API with the category slug as the query (e.g. q=propulsion) — produces approximate results, or (b) call the keyword API for every term you care about and filter client-side on _source.category.
• Latency / rate-limiting. Median response ~1.6-1.8s per API call from a US-West vantage point. No rate-limit headers and no formal block observed at 3 req/s; keep ≤ 2 req/s sustained to be polite.
• CDN cache is aggressive. X-Drupal-Cache: HIT on most responses; Cache-Control: must-revalidate, no-cache, private is ignored by the CloudFront layer in practice. Newly-added software entries may take up to a few minutes to appear. The revision_date field in _source is the canonical "last modified" timestamp.
• sw_url is sparsely populated. Open-source codes typically have a non-empty sw_url pointing to a GitHub/SourceForge/lab page; export-controlled codes (U.S. Release Only, U.S. Government Purpose Release) leave it blank and require the "Request Software" form (which this skill does not exercise).
• sw_version_date: "1970-01-01T08:00:00.000Z" is a sentinel for "no version date". Treat as null. (The 8:00 offset is PST epoch-zero — a Drupal default.)
• Browser session not always reachable. Driving software.nasa.gov through a Browserbase remote session requires resolving connect.{region}.browserbase.com (WSS/CDP endpoint), which is firewalled in some agent runtime environments — only api.browserbase.com (REST gateway, used by browse cloud fetch/browse cloud search) is reachable. This is fine for this skill since the JSON API path needs only HTTPS GETs — but it means automated screenshots may not be available depending on your sandbox.

Expected Output

A. Keyword-search response shape

One object per matching software. Pull the entire _source block — there are no positional arrays or decode tables to worry about; every field is named.

{
  "query": "trajectory",
  "center": "aw",
  "total": 53,
  "results": [
    {
      "case_number": "LAR-18744-1",
      "marketing_title": "Low Fidelity Space Systems Analysis Tools-Heliocentric Trajectory Tool",
      "marketing_desc": "This tool is produced is take advantage of pre-existing resources of known lambert trajectory solutions to various bodies, NEA's and more. ...",
      "tech_title": "Low Fidelity Space Systems Analysis Tools-Heliocentric Trajectory Tool",
      "sw_desc": "Full technical description (often longer than marketing_desc)...",
      "category": "design and integration tools",
      "sw_category": "Design and Integration Tools",
      "center": "LARC",
      "release_type": "U.S. Release Only",
      "sw_version": "1.0",
      "sw_version_date": "1970-01-01T08:00:00.000Z",
      "release_aisc_date": "2016-07-14T07:00:00.000Z",
      "revision_date": "2016-07-14T07:00:00.000Z",
      "sw_url": "",
      "sw_operating_system": "",
      "reference_number": "LAR-18744-1",
      "client_record_id": "LAR-18744-1",
      "id": "software_release_LAR-18744-1",
      "aisc_keyword": "",
      "catalog_note": "",
      "more_sw_info": "",
      "search": "(deduplicated full-text blob)",
      "title": "Low Fidelity Space Systems Analysis Tools-Heliocentric Trajectory Tool",
      "detail_url": "https://software.nasa.gov/software/LAR-18744-1"
    }
  ],
  "next_offset": 9
}

B. Direct case-number lookup response shape

{
  "case_number": "LAR-18744-1",
  "found": true,
  "title": "Low Fidelity Space Systems Analysis Tools-Heliocentric Trajectory Tool",
  "category": "Design and Integration Tools",
  "release_type": "U.S. Release Only",
  "operating_system": null,
  "detail_url": "https://software.nasa.gov/software/LAR-18744-1",
  "description": "Overview text from the rendered detail page...",
  "contact_email": "[email protected]"
}

C. Not-found shape (case-number direct lookup)

{
  "case_number": "ZZZ-99999-1",
  "found": false,
  "detail_url": "https://software.nasa.gov/software/ZZZ-99999-1",
  "http_status": 404
}

D. Empty-search shape (keyword)

{
  "query": "nonexistentxyz",
  "center": "aw",
  "total": 0,
  "results": [],
  "next_offset": null
}

E. Autocomplete-only shape (when partial query is too short to search)

{
  "partial": "traj",
  "suggestions": [
    "trajectory",
    "trajectory optimization",
    "trajectories",
    "trajectory model",
    "trajectory estimation"
  ]
}