Arctic Lakes

NASA’s Blue Marble

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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.

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.

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...

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

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

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

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.

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...

A photograph of the Varzea Forest area of Brazil (3 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.

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

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...

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

Mounted above the Payload Module, the Spacecraft Bus is a multi-purpose platform housing many of the electronics required for the observatory to function, including components for power, propulsion...

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

An artist’s concept of the SWOT spacecraft (February 2015).

Lake Calado, Amazon

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