Arctic

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...

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.

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

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

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

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...

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

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.

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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 ...

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.

The SWOT satellite observatory is being jointly built by NASA and Centre National D’Études Spatiales (CNES).

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

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

Lake Calado, Amazon

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...

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.

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

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

A diagram illustrating the swaths of data that SWOT will collect. 

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...

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

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.  

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

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