Alaska Lakes

Arctic

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

A photograph of the Varzea Forest area of Brazil (4 of 4).

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

A photograph of the Varzea Forest area of Brazil (1 of 4).

Lake Calado, Amazon

The U.K. Space Agency will provide a part of the radar payload for SWOT.

SWOT Applications Lead, Margaret Srinivasan, helps young visitors match data user types - from coastal safety officers to farmers - with pictures representing SWOT applications.

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

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...

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

Arctic Lakes

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.

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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).

A view of SWOT from inside a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft, as it was being loaded en route to Thales Alenia Space near Cannes, France.

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

AirSWOT plays a key role in SWOT mission development. It allows scientists to study interferometric data before launch and thus be prepared to effectively interpret SWOT data after launch.

Highly visible in their red shirts, SWOT project team members - including Project Manager Parag Vaze at left - interact with the public during the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) "Open House" ...

The SWOT satellite observatory is being jointly built by NASA and Centre National D’Études Spatiales (CNES).

AirSWOT is using parts of Saskatchewan as a testing ground for mapping water levels.

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

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.