Recover NASA NEO close-approach + feed clients (salvage from March swarm)

[THOClabs]

Summary

Recovers the one piece of genuinely-unmerged work from the March 2026 branch swarm (~60 near-duplicate AI-generated branches for this feature, none of which ever merged): NASA near-Earth-object tracking clients for pre-entry awareness at the Nevada site. Brought onto current main as clean standalone additions rather than merging any 45-commits-behind swarm branch.

What's included

• services/meteor_tracking/close_approach_client.py (372 lines) — NASA/JPL CNEOS Close Approach Data client: CADClient, CloseApproach, ThreatLevel, estimate_diameter_from_h, generate_approach_prayer, fetch_upcoming_approaches.
• services/meteor_tracking/neo_feed_client.py (186 lines) — NASA NEO Feed API client (NEOFeedClient).
• __init__.py lazy loaders get_close_approach_client() / get_neo_feed_client(), matching the existing aiohttp-lazy-import pattern.
• tests/unit/test_neo_client.py, tests/unit/test_neo_feed_client.py (1,245 lines).

Why this way

The feature spawned ~60 near-duplicate branches (NEO client × 29, hourly scanner × 10, event journal × 9, space-weather × 2, …), all 45 commits behind main. Merging them would be conflict chaos. These two clients are the coherent, self-contained core (stdlib + aiohttp, already a declared dependency; no dependency on the since-refactored meteor_service), so they drop onto current main cleanly.

Testing

• pytest tests/unit/test_neo_client.py tests/unit/test_neo_feed_client.py → 63 passed
• pytest tests/unit/test_meteor_tracking.py (regression) + NEO → 86 passed
• Package imports verified via the lazy loaders

Notes

The broader swarm ideas not included here (hourly scanner, event journal, space-weather client) can be salvaged in follow-ups if wanted; they're more entangled with the old meteor_service. This PR recovers the crown-jewel NEO capability; the remaining swarm branches are slated for deletion as stale duplicates.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Generated by Claude Code

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Note

Low Risk
Additive library code and tests with no changes to auth, persistence, or existing meteor service behavior; external HTTP to public NASA APIs only.

Overview
Adds pre-entry near-Earth object awareness to NIGHTWATCH meteor tracking, complementing existing post-entry fireball APIs.

A new JPL CNEOS Close Approach Data client (CADClient) fetches upcoming passes, maps them to a shared CloseApproach model with ThreatLevel (routine → alert), diameter estimates from H magnitude, and Lexicon-style generate_approach_prayer output. A second NASA NeoWs feed client (NEOFeedClient) reuses the same types and supplies official is_potentially_hazardous_asteroid flags where CAD only uses a heuristic.

Package entry points follow the existing pattern: lazy get_close_approach_client() and get_neo_feed_client() in services/meteor_tracking/__init__.py (aiohttp loaded only when called). Unit coverage is in test_neo_client.py and test_neo_feed_client.py; nothing in this diff wires the clients into meteor_service or a scheduler yet.

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Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes using default effort and found 2 potential issues.

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Missing distance defaults to alert

High Severity

When miss_distance.astronomical is absent, parsing uses 0 for distance_au and distance_ld, so CloseApproach.threat_level can classify the object as ALERT despite unknown or non-zero kilometer data.

 

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NEO feed uses local date

Medium Severity

Default start_date uses date.today() (local calendar date) while the CAD client and other NEO timing use UTC, so the implicit feed window can shift by a day relative to close-approach queries near timezone boundaries.

 

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