Arctic Lakes

NASA’s Blue Marble

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

A photograph of the Varzea Forest area of Brazil (3 of 4).

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...

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.

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

The SWOT satellite observatory is being jointly built 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.

Siberian Lakes

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.

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 diagram illustrating the swaths of data that SWOT will collect. 

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

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

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

Alaska lakes.

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

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).

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.

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

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.  

Arctic

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