vocabulary: Saildrone
provider: Saildrone
providerId: saildrone
created: '2026-05-24'
modified: '2026-05-24'
description: Domain vocabulary for Saildrone's USV platforms, missions, datasets, and partner programs.
terms:
  - term: USV
    expansion: Unmanned Surface Vehicle
    description: Autonomous wind/solar-powered surface vessel; Saildrone's core product class.
  - term: Drone
    description: Saildrone's customer-facing name for an individual USV. Each drone has a numeric ID (e.g. 1039) used as a mission identifier in the API.
  - term: Mission
    description: A scheduled deployment of one or more drones for a defined customer, area, and data goal. Mission IDs are reused as the path parameter in /v1/timeseries/{mission}.
  - term: Explorer
    description: Saildrone's 23ft compact USV class, optimized for environmental sensing.
  - term: Voyager
    description: Saildrone's 33ft mid-size multi-mission USV class — maritime domain awareness and counter-narcotics.
  - term: Surveyor
    description: Saildrone's 65ft deep-ocean bathymetric mapping USV.
  - term: Spectre
    description: Saildrone's newest USV class with Silent Endurance (ASW/ISR) and Stealth Strike (kinetic) variants.
  - term: METOC
    expansion: Meteorological and Oceanographic
    description: Combined air/sea observation data — wind, waves, temperature, salinity. The atmospheric and oceanographic datasets in the Saildrone API are the METOC surface.
  - term: MDA
    expansion: Maritime Domain Awareness
    description: Persistent surveillance for surface vessels, AIS contacts, and dark targets.
  - term: ISR
    expansion: Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance
    description: Defense application class for Saildrone Spectre and Voyager.
  - term: ASW
    expansion: Anti-Submarine Warfare
    description: Spectre Silent Endurance mission profile using towed-array acoustic detection.
  - term: TPOS
    expansion: Tropical Pacific Observing System
    description: Long-running NOAA program; Saildrone provides USV-based observations published via PMEL ERDDAP.
  - term: Mission Portal
    description: Saildrone's secure web app for tasking, geofences, alerts, and live multi-INT visualization.
  - term: ERDDAP
    expansion: Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program
    description: NOAA's open-data server (used by PMEL) for Saildrone open data downloads in NetCDF, CSV, JSON, and Parquet.
  - term: Multi-INT
    description: Combined radar, AIS, EO/IR, acoustic, and environmental data streams delivered by the Saildrone API and Mission Portal.
  - term: Time Series
    description: 1-minute-averaged measurements per drone/dataset, accessible via /v1/timeseries/{mission}.
  - term: Drone Access
    description: A record returned from /v1/auth/access listing the drone_id, start/end date range, and datasets an API key is authorized to query.
datasets:
  - name: vehicle
    description: USV telemetry — SOG, COG, HDG, battery voltage, solar input.
  - name: atmospheric
    description: METOC atmosphere — air temperature, RH, barometric pressure, wind, waves.
  - name: oceanographic
    description: Ocean surface — sea surface temperature, salinity, conductivity.
  - name: biogeochemical
    description: BGC — dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, CO2 (dry mole fraction and seawater partial pressure).
platforms:
  - name: Explorer
    length: 23ft
    primaryUse: Environmental sensing
  - name: Voyager
    length: 33ft
    primaryUse: MDA, counter-narcotics
  - name: Surveyor
    length: 65ft
    primaryUse: Deep-ocean seafloor mapping
  - name: Spectre
    primaryUse: ISR / ASW / kinetic
partners:
  - NOAA PMEL
  - NOAA SWFSC
  - US Navy (Task Force 59)
  - NASA (SWOT cal/val)
  - EUMETSAT
  - Lockheed Martin
  - BOEM