Arctic

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

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

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

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

SWOT Applications Lead, Margaret Srinivasan, helps young visitors match data user types - from coastal safety officers to farmers - with pictures representing SWOT applications.

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.

Artist’s concept of seven altimeters orbiting Earth: Jason-CS/Sentinel-6B, SWOT, Sentinel-6A, Jason 3, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason 1 and OSTM/Jason 2.

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...

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Soccer Nets on a levee in the Amazon

AirSWOT plays a key role in SWOT mission development. It allows scientists to study interferometric data before launch and thus be prepared to effectively interpret SWOT data after launch.

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

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

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

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

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.

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...

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