Why SWOT Matters

Tweets by NASAOcean

[17-Oct-18] A device built in the UK by Honeywell, which will form a vital part of the mission to make the first global survey of the world's surface waters and oceans, has been delivered to Thales Alenia Space in France. The UK-built device, known as a duplexer, is a vital component that routes radar signals around the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. The duplexer will be integrated into a Radio-Frequency Unit by Thales Alenia Space before NASA engineers add it to the KaRin instrument developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. [26-Sep-18] Two of NASA's recently awarded Earth Venture science investigations are highly relevant to SWOT. Marc Simard (JPL) is spearheading an investigation to better understand the natural processes that maintain and build land in major river deltas threatened by rising seas. Thomas Farrar (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) will lead an ocean campaign 200 miles off the coast of San Francisco designed to explore the potentially large influence that small-scale ocean eddies have on the exchange of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere. [01-Aug-18] Water volume cannot currently be measured directly from space. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, planned for launch in 2021, intends to provide a major improvement in the availability of surface extent and storage change for surface water bodies such as lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, and rivers globally. With SWOT data, water volume, and river discharge can be more easily estimated.