Best for
- Farmers, city planners, NGOs, and students without GIS expertise
- Developers who want natural-language satellite data analysis
- Teams wanting zero-credential self-hosting
A
Axion Planetary MCP
Community
The world's first virtual satellite you can connect with MCP — Earth observation as easy as conversation.
GitHub source repository ↗
50FMRS · D
Positioned as a 'virtual satellite,' this project lowers the barrier to Earth observation with end-to-end tools for search, mapping, processing, classification, and export over free public data, requiring no cloud credentials when self-hosted — great for rapid prototyping and non-experts; however, the hosted free tier is limited, and advanced features like SAR-to-optical are hosted-only.
Axion Planetary MCP (MIT-licensed) is a foundation for democratizing geospatial AI agents, fully rebuilt on AWS in V2.0. It lets users search and analyze free public satellite imagery (Sentinel-2, Landsat, NAIP) via natural language over MCP, with data sourced from the AWS Earth Search STAC API (no auth required). It offers a hosted SSE server (via an npx bridge) and self-hosting via Docker or source; basic self-hosted functionality needs no cloud credentials.
Tools
axion_data
Search satellite imagery from Sentinel-2, Landsat 8/9, and NAIP collections.
axion_map
Create interactive maps with NDVI/EVI/SAVI, NDWI/MNDWI, NDBI indices and true/false color composites.
axion_process
Process imagery: cloud-free composites, temporal mosaics, 9+ spectral indices, band math.
axion_classification
ML land cover classification using Random Forest with custom training points and accuracy metrics.
axion_export
Export GeoTIFF, PNG thumbnails, XYZ map tiles, and S3 cloud storage (S3 requires AWS credentials).
axion_system
System utilities: health check, configuration info, available collections.
Setup
- Get an API key (try the starter key in the README or request one by email). 2. Add an mcpServers entry to your Claude Desktop config using npx -y axion-mcp --api-key YOUR_API_KEY. 3. Restart Claude Desktop. Alternatives: global npm install of axion-mcp, or self-host via Docker (port 3000, optional REQUIRE_AUTH) and connect with sse-bridge.mjs to http://localhost:3000/sse.
claude_desktop_config.json
{"mcpServers":{"axion":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","axion-mcp","--api-key","YOUR_API_KEY"]}}}
Fit and risk
Not for
- Users needing high-resolution commercial imagery
- Users unwilling to self-host but wary of the free hosted tier
- Production remote-sensing workflows requiring sub-meter real-time data
Required permissions
- API key (for hosted server authentication)
- Optional AWS credentials (only for GeoTIFF exports to S3)
- Local network access to reach the SSE server
Risks and side effects
- The hosted server runs on Render's free tier and may take ~30 seconds to wake when idle
- The starter API key is published in the README and may be abused or revoked
- Exports over 10MB require an S3 setup
- AWS credentials for S3 exports must be kept secure
Troubleshooting
- 'npx not found': install Node.js 18+
- 'Unauthorized': verify the API key has no extra spaces or use the AXION_API_KEY env var
- 'Connection refused': the hosted server may be sleeping; wait 30 seconds or self-host
- Tools not showing in Claude: fully quit and restart Claude Desktop, and validate the config JSON syntax
Use cases
Monitor crop health on farmland with NDVI
Track water quality and levels in lakes and reservoirs
Analyze urban expansion and heat islands
Monitor forest health and real-time deforestation
Supported clients
Claude DesktopFull support