NASA’s new searchable media library is a treasure trove of space pics and video

Do you like space? Do you like looking at it, wishing you were there instead of here, perhaps? Well NASA just did something that will make your day. The U.S. space agency launched a new web-based search engine for much of its catalog of images, video and audio files, which you can browse by keyword and metadata, so that you never have to remember the dismal reality that you’re earthbound ever again.

NASA’s Image and Video Library website is officially “Where I belong,” and features everything it could possibly need: A big, easy to find search bar where you can type things like “asteroid,” “supernova,” or “reptilian” to find exactly what you’re looking for. You can also filter only specific kinds of content, and sort results by recency of their upload date, or by popularity.

One result: I’ll take that as confirmation.

All the content on the site is embeddable, and there are multiple resolutions to choose from for downloads. The site also shows image metadata, so you can see what equipment was used when they were captured. There’s also a caption file available for all video, so you can easily include subtitles with clips when reposting.

This is a terrific resource for media covering news or interested in space science, and a great way to just kill time even if you’re not planning on repurposing any of the available media. NASA notes that this isn’t a comprehensive collection of its available media, but a representative and deep collection with an easy-to-access public interface. It’s also planning to expand this collection over time.

I will probably never go to space, but at least now I can play pretend that much more easily.