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

Description

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

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

Set Up Steps

Estimated time: 15-20 minutes

NASA API (Required): Get your free API key at api.nasa.gov
Apify (Required): Create account and connect via OAuth
OpenAI (Required): Add your API key from platform.openai.com
Notification Channels (Choose at least one):
Slack: Create OAuth app and connect
Discord: Create webhook URL
Email: Configure SMTP settings
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