Saildrone

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.

1 APIs 3 Capabilities 0 Features

MaritimeOcean DataUSVUnmanned Surface VehicleAutonomous SystemsMETOCMaritime Domain AwarenessAnti Submarine WarfareDefenseClimateOceanographyBathymetryBiogeochemical

Saildrone publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network: Mission API. Tagged areas include Maritime, Ocean Data, USV, Unmanned Surface Vehicle, and Autonomous Systems.

The Saildrone catalog on APIs.io includes 3 machine-runnable capabilities, 1 JSON-LD context, and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Saildrone’s developer surface includes product news, GitHub presence, YouTube channel, and 23 more developer resources.

APIs

Saildrone Mission API

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...

Capabilities

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Saildrone Mission API — Authentication

Saildrone Mission API key/secret authentication and drone access discovery. 2 operations. Self-contained Naftiko capability covering one Saildrone business surface.

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Saildrone Mission API — Health

Saildrone Mission API health check. 1 operation. Lead operation Saildrone Get Service Health. Self-contained Naftiko capability covering one Saildrone business surface.

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Saildrone Mission API — Time Series

Saildrone Mission API per-mission time-series retrieval across vehicle, atmospheric, oceanographic, and biogeochemical datasets. 1 operation. Self-contained Naftiko capability c...

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Semantic Vocabularies

Saildrone Context

24 classes · 8 properties

JSON-LD

API Governance Rules

Saildrone API Rules

6 rules · 4 errors 2 warnings

SPECTRAL

Resources

MissionPortal

DataProducts

PartnerOpenData

PartnerOpenData

PartnerOpenData

PartnerOpenData

Sources

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-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/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
      - type: NaftikoCapability
        url: capabilities/mission-health.yaml
      - type: NaftikoCapability
        url: capabilities/mission-authentication.yaml
      - type: NaftikoCapability
        url: capabilities/mission-time-series.yaml
    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: [email protected]