Fun with NASA's Open Data Portal - News - SparkFun Electronics

"One of the most powerful tools available to tinkerers and prototypers is the Application Program Interface. An API is the structure by which two computer programs talk to each other – think of it as a traffic cop for information traveling between two applications.

In a workshop at SXSW EDU last year, I encountered NASA’s open data platform. My mind was blown by the fact that a good percentage of NASA’s projects reveal their data and code through an open API, and it’s all fairly well supported and reasonably easy to get started with...."