in various ways for many similar types of sensors utilized in ocean sciences, including a drogue to make the surface unit drift with the ocean currents and less with the wind. Our main application is to [...] platforms to obtain time series data throughout all seasons from the very remote regions in the Arctic and Antarctic. Our autonomous platforms, or more generally speaking ‘ice tethered platforms’, are [...] airborne campaigns and leave them behind to continue monitoring the atmosphere, snow, sea ice, and upper ocean. Often, we simply call them ‘buoys’ although most of these systems are not able to float and depend