Siberian Lakes

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...

Alaska lakes.

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

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.

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 ...

Lake Calado, Amazon

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Disappearing lakes in Barrow, Alaska.

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

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...

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

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).

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

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

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...

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