NASA's Blue Marble

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

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

Arctic

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.

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

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

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.

Lake Calado, Amazon

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

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

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

Highly visible in their red shirts, SWOT project team members - including Project Manager Parag Vaze at left - interact with the public during the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) "Open House" ...

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.