Spaceflight News

What the Spaceflight News MCP server does

The Spaceflight News MCP server exposes structured access to spaceflight news aggregated from dozens of sources. These include Spaceflight Now, NASASpaceflight, NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, ESA, and other publishers represented by the Spaceflight News API.

Its tools cover four related tasks:

• Search articles using full-text terms, with optional filters for news source, publication date, and featured status.
• Retrieve one article by its numeric ID, including its complete summary and any associated launches or events.
• Return the newest long-form mission reports, which are longer than standard news articles.
• List all sources known to the API and return the API version, so source names can be reused when filtering searches.

Search results and reports are ordered newest first. All four listed tools are keyless.

How it works

You can connect through the Pipeworx gateway at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/spaceflight-news/mcp. The gateway exposes the pack tools and also adds shared Pipeworx meta-tools. Those shared tools can route questions across the broader Pipeworx catalog, so the scoped endpoint lists more tools than the four spaceflight-specific tools described here.

The same gateway also has a full endpoint at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp. The difference is which pack tools appear directly in the tool list; the shared routing capability can reach the wider catalog from either endpoint.

For applications that do not use an MCP client, the gateway provides HTTP tool calls. For example, article search can be invoked with a POST request to the corresponding spaceflight_news_search_articles tool endpoint and a JSON body containing the search term.

Setup and configuration

Add the gateway URL to an MCP client configuration, or run the standalone package locally with npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-spaceflight-news. The local package communicates over stdin and stdout and does not require a Pipeworx account or gateway round trip.

The standalone configuration is:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "spaceflight-news": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-spaceflight-news"]
    }
  }
}

The gateway configuration uses the url field instead.

Tools and capabilities

search_articles supports full-text searching and filters for news_site, publication date, and featured status. Use list_sources first when an exact source name is needed. get_article accepts a numeric article ID and returns a full, untruncated summary with related launch and event data. latest_reports focuses on longer mission reporting rather than regular article results.

Limitations and notes

The Spaceflight News MCP server depends on the articles and metadata available through the Spaceflight News API. The material does not specify refresh intervals, pagination behavior, ranking controls beyond newest-first ordering, or historical coverage guarantees.

Gateway connections include shared Pipeworx meta-tools in addition to the pack tools. The local stdio mode exposes only the spaceflight-specific tools and does not provide the shared routing tools. The project is licensed under MIT.