Saildrone

aid: saildrone
name: Saildrone
description: Saildrone is an Alameda, California maritime autonomy company that designs, manufactures, and operates a global
  fleet of wind/solar-powered autonomous surface vehicles (USVs) for ocean science, maritime domain awareness, and defense
  applications. Founded in 2012 by Richard Jenkins, the company runs four USV classes — Explorer (23ft, environmental sensing),
  Voyager (33ft, MDA and counter-narcotics), Surveyor (65ft, deep-ocean bathymetric mapping), and the newer Spectre (ISR /
  anti-submarine warfare / kinetic payloads). Saildrone has logged over 2.5M nautical miles and 65,000 days at sea across
  customers including NOAA PMEL, NOAA SWFSC, the US Navy (Task Force 59), NASA, EUMETSAT, BOEM, and Lockheed Martin (which
  invested $50M in October 2025). Saildrone delivers data through two product surfaces — the Saildrone Mission Portal (secure
  web app for tasking and live multi-INT visualization) and the Saildrone Public Mission API (BETA) at developer-mission.saildrone.com,
  which exposes key/secret authenticated endpoints for health, drone access discovery, and time-series retrieval across vehicle,
  atmospheric, oceanographic, and biogeochemical datasets. Open ocean data from past missions is published via NOAA PMEL ERDDAP
  and NCEI under open-data terms.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: approval
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free · Requires approval
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
position: Provider
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/saildrone.png
tags:
- Maritime
- Ocean Data
- USV
- Unmanned Surface Vehicle
- Autonomous Systems
- METOC
- Maritime Domain Awareness
- Anti Submarine Warfare
- Defense
- Climate
- Oceanography
- Bathymetry
- Biogeochemical
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/saildrone/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-05-24'
modified: '2026-05-24'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
apis:
- aid: saildrone:saildrone-mission-api
  name: Saildrone Mission API
  tags:
  - Saildrone
  - Mission
  - Time Series
  - Ocean Data
  - METOC
  humanURL: https://www.saildrone.com/data-delivery/api
  properties:
  - url: https://www.saildrone.com/data-delivery/api
    type: Documentation
  - url: https://developer-mission.saildrone.com/api-docs
    type: SwaggerUI
  - url: openapi/saildrone-mission-api-openapi.yml
    type: OpenAPI
  - url: json-schema/saildrone-mission-access-schema.json
    type: JSONSchema
  - url: json-schema/saildrone-mission-time-series-record-schema.json
    type: JSONSchema
  - url: json-ld/saildrone-context.jsonld
    type: JSONLD
  - url: examples/saildrone-authenticate-example.json
    type: Examples
  - url: examples/saildrone-list-access-example.json
    type: Examples
  - url: examples/saildrone-get-time-series-example.json
    type: Examples
  - url: rules/saildrone-rules.yml
    type: SpectralRules
  description: Saildrone Public Mission API (BETA). Provides authenticated access via a key/secret bearer flow to per-mission
    time-series telemetry across the four canonical Saildrone datasets — vehicle, atmospheric, oceanographic, and biogeochemical
    — plus drone access discovery and a health probe. Hosted at developer-mission.saildrone.com.
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/saildrone-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.saildrone.com
- type: About
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/about
- type: API
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/data-delivery/api
- type: SwaggerUI
  url: https://developer-mission.saildrone.com/api-docs
- type: MissionPortal
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/data-delivery/mission-portal
- type: DataProducts
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/technology/data
- type: Platform
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/platform/spectre
- type: Platform
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/platform/surveyor
- type: Platform
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/platform/voyager
- type: Platform
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/platform/explorer
- type: Services
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/service-model/fully-managed
- type: Capability
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/capabilities/metocean-survey
- type: News
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/news
- type: Press
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/press
- type: Careers
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/careers
- type: Contact
  url: https://www.saildrone.com/contact
- type: PartnerOpenData
  url: https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/saildrone/data-access
- type: PartnerOpenData
  url: https://data.pmel.noaa.gov/generic/erddap/tabledap/saildrone_gts.html
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/Saildrone
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/saildrone
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/saildrone
- type: YouTube
  url: https://www.youtube.com/@saildrone
- type: Plans
  url: plans/saildrone-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/saildrone-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/saildrone-finops.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/saildrone-vocabulary.yml
- url: https://www.saildrone.com/news
  type: Blog
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com