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
position: Provider
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
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: Example
      - url: examples/saildrone-list-access-example.json
        type: Example
      - url: examples/saildrone-get-time-series-example.json
        type: Example
      - 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: 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: Service
    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
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com