User guide

earthaccess enables authentication, search, and access for NASA Earth science data.

This user guide contains different forms of content for various user needs. Navigate to Quick Start to get working with earthaccess as quickly as possible.

This documentation follows the Diátaxis framework:

• How-to guides — shorter, goal-oriented instructions for specific tasks.
• Tutorials — longer, guided learning-oriented lessons.
• Explanation — understanding-oriented discussions of concepts.
• Reference — information-oriented technical details.

Learn more about Diátaxis at https://diataxis.fr/.

To learn more about the primary functions:

The Authentication section shows how earthaccess can be used to manage Earthdata Login and Earthdata Cloud credentials.

The Search section introduces how to search for NASA datasets (collections) and specific data granules.

The Access section introduces how to use earthaccess to download data to a local machine or stream data by opening it directly in memory.

For those unfamiliar, the NASA glossary and cloud computing terminology pages provide helpful vocabulary for working with NASA Earth science data.