Monitor NASA asteroid threats with AI fact-check and multi-channel alerts

Who Is This For?

This workflow is designed for space enthusiasts, science educators, journalists, fact-checkers, and researchers who want to stay informed about near-Earth asteroid threats while filtering out media sensationalism. It's also valuable for anyone studying how different regions cover space-related news.

What It Does

This workflow creates an automated planetary defense monitoring system that:

• Scans NASA's Near Earth Object database for potentially hazardous asteroids over a 7-day window
• Searches news coverage across three regions (US, Japan, EU) to compare media reporting
• Uses AI (GPT-4o-mini) to fact-check news claims against official NASA data
• Detects misinformation and measures media sensationalism levels
• Generates visual charts comparing actual threat levels vs media panic
• Sends alerts through multiple channels (Slack, Discord, Email)
• Logs all alerts to Google Sheets for historical analysis

How It Works

1. Trigger: Runs daily at 9 AM or on-demand via webhook
2. NASA Data Fetch: Retrieves 7-day asteroid forecast from NASA NeoWs API
3. Threat Analysis: Identifies potentially hazardous asteroids and assigns alert levels (LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH)
4. News Search: Searches news in US, Japan, and EU using Apify's Google Search Scraper
5. AI Fact-Check: GPT-4o-mini compares news claims against NASA data, detecting misinformation
6. Visualization: Generates gauge charts for threat level and media panic, plus regional comparison bar chart
7. Multi-Channel Alerts: Sends formatted reports to Slack, Discord, Email, and logs to Google Sheets

Set Up Steps

Estimated time: 15-20 minutes

1. NASA API (Required): Get your free API key at api.nasa.gov
2. Apify (Required): Create account and connect via OAuth
3. OpenAI (Required): Add your API key from platform.openai.com
4. Notification Channels (Choose at least one):
   • Slack: Create OAuth app and connect
   • Discord: Create webhook URL
   • Email: Configure SMTP settings
5. Google Sheets (Optional): Create a sheet for logging with columns: Date, Alert Level, Hazardous Count, Threat Score, Media Panic Score, Misinformation Detected, Top Asteroid, Most Accurate Region

Requirements

• NASA API key (free)
• Apify account (free tier available)
• OpenAI API key (paid)
• At least one notification channel configured
• n8n version 1.0+

How to Customize

• Change scan frequency: Modify the Schedule Trigger node
• Add more regions: Edit the "Configure Regional Search" code node
• Adjust alert thresholds: Modify lunar distance threshold (currently 10) in "Analyze Asteroid Threats"
• Disable channels: Simply remove connections to notification nodes you don't need
• Customize messages: Edit the "Format Multi-Channel Messages" node