Lake Calado, Amazon

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.

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

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

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

Arctic Lakes

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 ...

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...

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" ...

Arctic

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

Amazon Fishermen

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.

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

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

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

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...

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...

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for SWOT.

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

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

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

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.

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

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