NASA's Blue Marble

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

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...

Floodplain Channel 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.

Arctic Lakes

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 ...

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.

Lake Calado, Amazon

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

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

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

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

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.  

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

Canada is home to more than 30,000 lakes including these water bodies in Northern Alberta. The abundance of surface freshwater in Canada makes it a prime target for AirSWOT investigations.

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

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...

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

A Flooded Forest in the Amazon

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).

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

Alaska lakes.

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

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