Arctic Lakes

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

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

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

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

A photograph of the Varzea Forest area of Brazil (2 of 4).

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

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 ...

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...

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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 (4 of 4).

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

Arctic

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.

Amazon Fishermen

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

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

SWOT's nominal coverage during its 3-year science orbit will include measurements between 78°N and 78°S collected over a period of 21 days. Maps show the coverage after 3 days (left) and the full 2...

Siberian Lakes

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.  

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...

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

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).

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