NASA's Blue Marble

Alaska lakes.

Floodplain Channel in the Amazon

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...

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

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

Amazon Fishermen

Emblem for the SWOT mission.

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

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

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...

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

AirSWOT is using parts of Saskatchewan as a testing ground for mapping water levels.

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 ...

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.

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

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).

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...

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

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

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

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...

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