mcp-nasa-firmsSAFE
NASA FIRMS MCP — active-fire / thermal-anomaly detections from MODIS and VIIRS.
Overview
From the repository's own README, as read at the audited commit. Badges and raw HTML are left out.
Satellite active-fire detections from NASA FIRMS — every pixel MODIS or VIIRS measured as actively burning, published within ~3 hours of satellite overpass.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.
Tools
firms_hotspots_area(bbox, source?, day_range?, date?, limit?)— detections inside a
bounding box. bbox is west,south,east,north in degrees, or "world".
firms_hotspots_near(latitude, longitude, radius_km?, source?, day_range?, date?)—
detections around a point, sorted nearest first with distance_km.
firms_data_availability(source?)— first and last date each sensor product covers.
Call it before a historical query so an empty result can be read as "outside the archive" rather than "no fires".
Auth
BYO only. FIRMS requires a MAPKEY and publishes no keyless or demo path — verified 2026-09-17: every route answers `Invalid MAPKEY. (HTTP 400/401) without one. Pass it as apiKey`; the platform fallback env var is `PLATFORMNASAFIRMSKEY`.
The key is free and self-service at — an email address, no approval step. Limit is 5,000 transactions per 10 minutes, and a multi-day query counts as several transactions.
Data sources
- —
hotspot detections. The key goes in the PATH, not a header or a query param.
- — archive coverage.
Things the next person would otherwise rediscover
- `acq_time` is HHMM with leading zeros dropped.
"52"means 00:52Z. A naive
two-character slice reports it as 52:00 and gets the hour wrong for every pre-10:00 overpass.
- Brightness column names differ by sensor. VIIRS reports
bright_ti4/
bright_ti5; MODIS reports brightness / bright_t31. Both are mapped to `brightne
4d43f865865eOBSERVED · 2026-10-11Connect
Built from this server's own package name, version and transport as found in its source — not copied from anyone's documentation, so it cannot drift against a page we do not control.
claude mcp add mcp-nasa-firms -- npx -y @pipeworx/[email protected]
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-nasa-firms": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@pipeworx/[email protected]"
]
}
}
}Exposed tools (3)
3 read · 0 write · 0 destructive.
| Tool | Risk | Description |
|---|---|---|
firms_data_availability | read | Which dates each NASA FIRMS satellite product actually covers — the first and last date available per sensor, for near-real-time and standard-processing streams. Call this before querying a historical date so an empty hotspot result can be read as |
firms_hotspots_area | read | |
firms_hotspots_near | read |
Trust audit
SAFEgrade B · trust 89/100 Nothing in the source contradicts what it says it does. Grade A is reserved for packages that have also passed the behavioural sandbox.
| Layer | What it checks | Result |
|---|---|---|
| L0 | Provenance & inventory | PASS |
| L1 | Static analysis of the code | PASS |
| L2 | Instruction surface (what it tells the agent) | PASS |
| L3 | Class-specific surface | PASS |
| L4 | Behavioural (sandbox) | SKIPPED |
What the source does
- Filesystem
- none-observed
- Network
- declared (1 observation(s))
- Shell
- none-observed
- Dependencies
- not all pinned
- Secrets in source
- none-found
Findings (1)
@modelcontextprotocol/sdk, tsx, typescript, @cloudflare/workers-types
Gates applied: no_behavioural_pass.
4d43f865865efull audit observations/trust-audit/mcp-server/pipeworx-io__mcp-nasa-firms.json · Report an issue / request a re-scanAudit history
Every audit this server has had. A grade with a past is a grade somebody is still checking.
| Date | Source | Verdict | Grade | Score | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-11 | 4d43f865865e | SAFE | B | 89 | first audit |
Questions
What is the mcp-nasa-firms MCP server?
NASA FIRMS MCP — active-fire / thermal-anomaly detections from MODIS and VIIRS.
What tools does mcp-nasa-firms expose?
3 in total: 3 read-only, 0 that write, and 0 that can delete or overwrite. Every one is listed on this page with its risk.
Is mcp-nasa-firms safe to connect to an agent?
The audit found nothing in the source that contradicts what it says it does, and graded it B (89/100). Grade A is held back for packages that have also passed a sandboxed behavioural run, which is why a clean server reads B.
What credentials does mcp-nasa-firms need?
No credential environment variables were found in its source, so it appears to need none.
How does mcp-nasa-firms run?
It speaks stdio and streamable-http, so it runs as a local process your client starts. It is published on npm as @pipeworx/mcp-nasa-firms at 0.1.1.
How current is this page?
The grade is for one exact copy of the source (4d43f865865e), read on 2026-10-11. The repository is watched and re-audited when it changes.