SWOT Emblem

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Open House visitors are delighted to see how well their color-coded stickers match the "sea surface topography model of the Gulf of Mexico within a wooden box.

SWOT will provide NASA’s first global survey of Earth’s surface water.

Arctic Lakes

An alternate logo for the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission.

Alaska lakes.

SWOT leaving NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, en route to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California. Once the scientific payload arrived, it was sent to a Thale...

An artist’s concept of the SWOT spacecraft (January 2012).

The SWOT Payload module consists of two primary components: the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) and the Nadir module.

Engineers integrate separate parts of the SWOT satellite into one in a Thales Alenia Space clean room facility in Cannes, France.

An artist’s concept of the SWOT spacecraft (March 2012).

Visiting Scout uses a color-coded, calibrated stick to determine "sea surface topography" within a wooden box while his sister records his results by placing stickers on a card.

Canada is home to more than 30,000 lakes including these water bodies in Northern Alberta. The abundance of surface freshwater in Canada makes it a prime target for AirSWOT investigations.

Pictured are team members who helped load the hardware for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite's research instruments onto a C-17 airplane pose for a picture. The payload left M...

Teams from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California, loaded the scientific payload for the SWOT Earth-observing satelli...

Arctic

A diagram illustrating the swaths of data that SWOT will collect. 

SWOT's nominal coverage during its 3-year science orbit will include measurements between 78°N and 78°S collected over a period of 21 days. Maps show the coverage after 3 days (left) and the full 2...

Artist's impression of the future SWOT satellite making sea surface height observations, even through clouds.

The Canadian Space Agency will contribute to the SWOT Mission by providing a high-power assembly component for SWOT’s Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn).

Part of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite's science instrument payload sits in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory during assembly.  

This animation shows estimates of average sea ice freeboard — or the amount of ice above the waterline — taken over a 21-day period from Aug. 8, 2023, to Jan. 14, 2024, by the Surface Water and Oce...

An image of the original concept for the Water and Terrestrial Elevation Recovery (WATER) Mission, which later became SWOT.

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

Artist’s concept of seven altimeters orbiting Earth: Jason-CS/Sentinel-6B, SWOT, Sentinel-6A, Jason 3, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason 1 and OSTM/Jason 2.

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon