Amazon Fishermen

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" ...

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

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...

The first 90 days of the SWOT science mission will be flown in a "fast-sampling" phase that revisits specific areas once per day. This phase will begin after a 90-day commissioning phase for engine...

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

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...

A photograph of the Amazon River Delta, captured by Landsat in 2006.

NASA’s Blue Marble

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

An early rendering of the SWOT spacecraft (February 2011).

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

SWOT will collect data across a 75-mile (120-kilometer) wide swath, with a gap in the center for an altimetry track. This animation shows the collection of data over the state of Florida, which is ...

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

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.  

Siberian Lakes

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and Centre National D’Études Spatiales (CNES).

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

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

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 Stream within a wooden box.

Crowds flock to the Earth Sciences exhibits during the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) "Open House" event, giving volunteers (red shirts) a chance to share information about their various miss...

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

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).

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...

This SWOT "Bannerbug" exhibit was created for display during hardware tests conducted during an eleven-day period in October 2008.