Celestial Node

What celestial-node MCP server does

The celestial-node MCP server exposes space information from Celestial Node to MCP-compatible AI assistants. Its coverage spans current orbital activity, launch schedules, agency and mission reference data, astronomical catalogs, and satellite tracking. The service aggregates information from organizations and providers including NASA, ESA, CNSA, JAXA, Roscosmos, ISRO, and SpaceX, according to the project documentation.

The tools are read-only. They issue GET requests and do not provide operations for changing records, launching actions, or accessing user data. This makes the server suitable for research, question answering, educational assistants, and monitoring-oriented workflows where the agent only needs to retrieve information.

How it works

The package runs as an MCP server and communicates with an MCP client over the command shown in the setup examples. Tool calls retrieve data from celestialnode.com, whose background workers update the service. The available results include both current data, such as station positions and people in orbit, and reference material, such as constellation listings and Mars mission details.

The celestial-node MCP server does not require an API key for basic use. Anonymous requests are limited to 25 per hour. A registered free account raises the allowance to 100 requests per day, while the documented paid tier permits 500 requests per day. These limits matter for agents that make repeated searches or combine many tool calls in one workflow.

Setup and configuration

Install and run the package through npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "celestial-node": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "celestialnode-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

For higher rate limits, register at celestialnode.com and pass the key as CELESTIAL_NODE_API_KEY:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "celestial-node": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "celestialnode-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "CELESTIAL_NODE_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

No credential is needed for anonymous operation.

Tools and capabilities

The 18 tools cover these areas:

• Track the ISS and Tiangong, including ISS latitude, longitude, altitude, and velocity.
• List crew members currently in orbit.
• Find upcoming worldwide rocket launches and curated space news.
• Inspect Mars missions, rover instruments and discoveries, and surface temperature, pressure, and wind.
• Search more than one million ESA Gaia stars, retrieve a star by Gaia source ID, and list the 88 IAU constellations.
• Find upcoming near-Earth-object close approaches and potentially hazardous asteroids with orbital data.
• Browse space agencies and search an encyclopedia covering spacecraft, missions, and engines.
• Count satellite categories, search tracked satellites by name, and inspect predicted satellite or rocket-stage re-entries.

Limitations and notes

The celestial-node MCP server is retrieval-only: the documented tools do not write data or expose user-data operations. Request quotas depend on authentication tier, so high-volume autonomous use requires an API key and may still be bounded by the paid-tier allowance. The project is released under the MIT license.