Recent Missions

Saildrone is the most proven and trusted manufacturer and operator of marine uncrewed surface vehicles. Explore some of the many missions we've completed around the world.


From the first autonomous circumnavigation of Antarctica to collecting scientific ocean data in Mediterranean to mapping the Arctic, Saildrone provides industry leading technology to meet your ocean data needs.

Saildrone handles missions as a fully managed service from launch and transit to the area of operations to real-time and final delivery of high-resolution data.

Click the buttons below to learn more about our mission to complete the first circumnavigation of Antarctica and access lesson plans inspired by the mission, free to download for teachers and parents.

Some of Our Recent Missions

Great Lakes Fisheries
Great Lakes Fisheries
Saildrone’s first freshwater mission, investigating the impact of sound on the accuracy of fish stock counts.
Learn More
EuroSea
EuroSea
SD 1079 spent 370 days at sea collecting CO2 data in a remote area of the Tropical Atlantic to improve global carbon projections and more sustainably manage ocean resources.
Learn More
Atlantic Hurricane Monitoring
Atlantic Hurricane Monitoring
Collecting data and video where it’s never been collected before—inside a hurricane—to better understand rapid intensification and improve hurricane forecasting.
Learn More
SF – Hawaii Multibeam Bathymetry
SF – Hawaii Multibeam Bathymetry
The Saildrone Surveyor completed a groundbreaking 2,250-nautical mile multibeam mapping mission from San Francisco to Honolulu.
Learn More
USCG MDA Demonstration
USCG MDA Demonstration
The USCG examined the feasibility, costs, and benefits of using low-cost autonomous vehicles to provide persistent maritime domain awareness in remote areas of the ocean.
Learn More
Arctic Single-Beam Mapping
Arctic Single-Beam Mapping
An 8,000 nautical mile mission from San Francisco to the Canadian border to provide modern, accurate mapping data of Alaska’s North Slope and the Bering Sea.
Learn More
ATOMIC / EUREC4A
ATOMIC / EUREC4A
A massive international effort using air, space, surface, and sub-surface platforms to improve climate models and weather prediction.
Learn More
Alaska Pollock Survey
Alaska Pollock Survey
With ship-based surveys canceled due to COVID-19, NOAA Fisheries turned to Saildrone to collect data to support the sustainable management of America’s largest fishery.
Learn More
Arctic MISST
Arctic MISST
A five-year mission to collect the first Arctic upper ocean temperature profiles with a full suite of surface measurements, which are expected to improve modeling of diurnal warming.
Learn More
Atlantic to Mediterranean
Atlantic to Mediterranean
The first mission by an autonomous vehicle from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, collecting environmental and carbon data for climate science.
Learn More
West Coast Survey
West Coast Survey
A 60-day effort to assess stocks of Pacific hake and five coastal pelagic species carried out in two sub-missions extending the full length of the US west coast.
Learn More
Alaska Red King Crab
Alaska Red King Crab
Tracking seasonal movements of Alaska red king crab using a Saildrone USV equipped with an acoustic receiver.
Learn More
Arctic Ice Edge
Arctic Ice Edge
Saildrone’s 5th annual Arctic mission was a joint effort between NOAA and NASA, as part of the NOPP Arctic MISST project.
Learn More
Antarctic Circumnavigation
Antarctic Circumnavigation
The world's first autonomous circumnavigation of Antarctica, enabling new key insights into ocean and climate processes.
Learn More
GOM Multibeam Bathymetry
GOM Multibeam Bathymetry
Saildrone's first shallow-water multibeam bathymetry mission in the Gulf of Mexico.
Learn More
Atlantic Crossing
Atlantic Crossing
The fastest Atlantic crossing by an autonomous vehicle, and the first vehicle to cross the Atlantic in both directions.
Learn More
North Sea Fisheries
North Sea Fisheries
Surveying sandeel, saithe, and herring off the coast of Bergen in partnership with Norway’s Institute of Marine Research.
Learn More
White Shark Café
White Shark Café
A multidisciplinary mission to understand why white sharks regularly congregate in a seemingly inhospitable part of the ocean.
Learn More
West Coast Survey
West Coast Survey
A 100-day mission from Vancouver Island to San Diego to assess fish stocks, count marine mammals, and test how uncrewed surface vehicles can augment ship-based sampling.
Learn More
Baja California
Baja California
A 60-day cruise to study sea surface temperature and air-sea heat fluxes along dynamic frontal regions off the coast of California.
Learn More
TPOS
TPOS
An ongoing mission to test the Saildrone platform as part of the Tropical Pacific Observation System monitoring weather and climate in the Pacific Ocean.
Learn More
US Arctic Survey
US Arctic Survey
Tracking melting ice, measuring CO2, and counting fish, seals, and whales to better understand behavior and population in the Bering and Chukchi Seas.
Learn More