Lake Calado, Amazon

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

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

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

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

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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

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

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

Amazon Fishermen

NASA’s Blue Marble

A banner explaining the purpose of the SWOT mission, created and displayed during testing.

SWOT technologies - advanced wide-swath technology, ocean and surface water topography measurements, and high-resolution products - will support such societal needs as dams, shipping, and surface w...

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

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...

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

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

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

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" ...

Siberian Lakes

Alaska lakes.

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

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

This collaborative mission poster, designed by CNES (French Space Agency), shows the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite soaring over an abstract of a water molecule.

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