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Authentication

You can use earthaccess to search for datasets and data without needing to log in. However, to access (download or stream) NASA Earth science data, whether from one of the NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) on-premises archive or from NASA Earthdata Cloud, you need an Earthdata Login account. You can register for a free Earthdata Login (EDL) account here.

Once you have an Earthdata Login account, you may use the earthaccess.login method to manage Earthdata Login credentials and, when you are working with cloud-hosted data, cloud credentials.

earthaccess.login offers three methods of logging in (or authenticating) using EDL:

By default, earthaccess.login() will look for a .netrc or environment variables first. If neither of these are found, it will prompt you to enter your username and password. The three methods are described in detail below.

earthaccess.login can also be used to login to different endpoints and get S3 credentials.

Login Interactively

If you have not created a .netrc file or EARTHDATA_USERNAME and EARTHDATA_PASSWORD environment variables, you can use the following approach to login.

>>> import earthaccess

>>> auth = earthaccess.login()
Enter your Earthdata Login username: your_username
Enter your Earthdata password:

You don't need to assign the result of earthaccess.login() to a variable but doing so enables access to session information. These are discussed in Accessing Session Information.

Setting earthaccess.login(strategy=interactive) will force a manual login.

Login using a .netrc

Do not use this strategy on untrusted machines or with shared accounts

earthaccess does not currently support encrypted .netrc files. This strategy of writing credentials in plain text to disk should not be used on untrusted machines or shared user accounts.

Creating a .netrc file

Using earthaccess.login to create a .netrc file

You can use earthaccess.login to create a .netrc for you. 

earthaccess.login(persist=True)
You will then be prompted for your Earthdata Login username and password. A .netrc (or _netrc) file will be created automatically.

Manually creating a .netrc file for Earthdata Login Credentials

Type the following on your command line, replacing <username> and <password> with your Earthdata Login credentials.

echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login <username> password <password>" >> $HOME/.netrc
chmod 600 $HOME/.netrc

Type the following on your command line, replacing <username> and <password> with your Earthdata Login credentials.

echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login <username> password <password>" >> $HOME/.netrc
chmod 600 $HOME/.netrc

In a CMD session, create a %HOME% environment variable. The following line creates %HOME% from the path in %USERPROFILE%, which looks something like C:\Users\"username". 

setx HOME %USERPROFILE%
You now need to create a _netrc file in %HOME%. 
echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login <username> password <password>" >> %HOME%\_netrc

Login using environment variables

Alternatively, Earthdata Login credentials can be created as environment variables EARTHDATA_USERNAME and EARTHDATA_PASSWORD.

If you want to set the environment variables for the current shell session, type the following on the command line. 

export EARTHDATA_USERNAME="username"
export EARTHDATA_PASSWORD="password"
If you want to set these environmental variables permanently, add these two lines to the appropriate configuration files for your operating system.

If you want to set the environment variables for the current shell session, type the following on the command line. 

export EARTHDATA_USERNAME="username"
export EARTHDATA_PASSWORD="password"
If you use bash and would like to set these environmental variables permanently, add these two lines to your ~/.profile file: 
EARTHDATA_USERNAME="username"
EARTHDATA_PASSWORD="password"
For other shells, use the recommended method to persistently set these environment variables for whichever shell you use.

To set the environment variables for the current CMD session, type the following: 

setx EARTHDATA_USERNAME "username"
setx EARTHDATA_PASSWORD "password"
To set these environmental variables permanently 1. Open the start menu. 2. Search for the "Advanced System Settings" control panel and click on it. 3. Click on the "Environment Variables" button toward the bottom of the screen. 4. Follow the prompts to add the variable to the user table.

Accessing different endpoints

Earthdata User Acceptance Testing (UAT) endpoint

If your EDL account is authorized to access the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment, you can set earthaccess to work with its EDL and CMR endpoints by setting the system argument at login, as follows:

import earthaccess

earthaccess.login(system=earthaccess.UAT)

Using earthaccess to get S3 credentials

earthaccess.login is a very convenient way to manage and provide Earthdata Login credentials. earthaccess.login can also be used to obtain S3 credentials to access NASA Earthdata Cloud. If you use earthaccess to access data in the cloud, you do not have to use this option, earthaccess handles this. However, if you are using other packages, such as h5coro, earthaccess can save a lot of time.

import earthaccess
import xarray as xr
import h5coro

auth = earthaccess.login()
s3_credentials = auth.get_s3_credentials(daac="NSIDC")

s3url_atl23 = 'nsidc-cumulus-prod-protected/ATLAS/ATL23/001/2023/03/' \
                '01/ATL23_20230401000000_10761801_001_01.h5'
ds = xr.open_dataset(s3url_atl23, engine='h5coro',
                     group='/mid_latitude/beam_1',
                     credentials=s3_credentials)