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 mapping), and Spectre (ISR / anti-submarine warfare / kinetic payloads) — and has logged over 2.5M nautical miles and 65,000 days at sea for customers including NOAA, the US Navy (Task Force 59), NASA, EUMETSAT, BOEM, and Lockheed Martin.
URL: Visit APIs.json
Run: Capabilities Using Naftiko
- Maritime, Ocean Data, USV, Unmanned Surface Vehicle, Autonomous Systems, METOC, Maritime Domain Awareness, Anti Submarine Warfare, Defense, Climate, Oceanography, Bathymetry, Biogeochemical
- Created: 2026-05-24
- Modified: 2026-05-24
| Platform | Length | Primary Use |
|---|---|---|
| Saildrone Explorer | 23 ft | Environmental sensing, METOC |
| Saildrone Voyager | 33 ft | Maritime domain awareness, counter-narcotics |
| Saildrone Surveyor | 65 ft | Deep-ocean seafloor mapping |
| Saildrone Spectre | — | ISR / ASW (Silent Endurance) and kinetic (Stealth Strike) |
Saildrone Public Mission API (BETA). Bearer-token authenticated REST API exposing health, key/secret auth, drone access discovery, and per-mission time-series retrieval across four datasets — vehicle, atmospheric, oceanographic, and biogeochemical. Hosted at developer-mission.saildrone.com.
Human URL: https://www.saildrone.com/data-delivery/api
- Documentation
- Swagger UI
- OpenAPI
- JSON Schema — Mission Access
- JSON Schema — Time Series Record
- JSON-LD Context
- Example — Authenticate
- Example — List Access
- Example — Get Time Series
- Spectral Rules
- Naftiko Capability — Health
- Naftiko Capability — Authentication
- Naftiko Capability — Time Series
The Mission API returns time-series data in four canonical datasets:
| Dataset | Description |
|---|---|
vehicle |
USV telemetry — SOG, COG, HDG, battery voltage, solar input |
atmospheric |
METOC atmosphere — air temperature, RH, barometric pressure, wind, waves |
oceanographic |
Ocean surface — sea surface temperature, salinity, conductivity |
biogeochemical |
BGC — dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, CO2 (dry mole fraction and seawater partial pressure) |
The Saildrone Mission Portal is the secure web command-and-control application bundled with Fully Managed engagements. It delivers live multi-INT visualization (radar tracks, AIS, EO/IR, acoustic, environmental), geofences, on-the-fly retasking, automated alerts, event logging, and mission replay. Public profiling of the Portal's internal API surface is gated; the OpenAPI in this repo covers the public developer-mission.saildrone.com BETA.
Past Saildrone mission data is published openly via:
- NOAA PMEL Ocean Climate Stations — Saildrone Data Access
- PMEL ERDDAP — Saildrone GTS
- Per-mission ERDDAP endpoints (Arctic 2018, TPOS, SWFSC, US Navy Task Force 59, etc.)
- NCEI Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (CO2 / pCO2)
Formats include NetCDF (CF/ACDD), CSV, JSON, and Parquet, with DOIs assigned per mission.
- Plans & Pricing — Mission-as-a-Service is contract-priced; API access is bundled.
- Rate Limits — pagination + interval thinning, short-lived bearer tokens.
- FinOps — FOCUS mapping of MaaS vehicle-day spend.