Surface Water and Ocean Topography

Surface Water and Ocean Topography
	Rendering of the SWOT satellite
Names	SWOT; WATER HM
Mission type	Hydrology / Oceanography
Operator	NASA / CNES
COSPAR ID	2022-173A
SATCAT no.	54754
Mission duration	Planned:; 3 years; Elapsed:; 1 year and 9 months
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer	Thales Alenia Space
Launch mass	2,200 kg (4,900 lb)
Dimensions	14.9 × 5 × 5 m (49 × 16 × 16 ft)
Power	8,000 watts
Start of mission
Launch date	December 16, 2022, 11:46 UTC
Rocket	Falcon 9 Block 5; B1071.6 ♺
Launch site	Vandenberg, SLC-4E
Contractor	SpaceX
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Low Earth orbit
Periapsis altitude	857 km (533 mi)
Apoapsis altitude	857 km (533 mi)
Inclination	77.6°
Period	102.89 minutes
Repeat interval	1 sidereal day
KaRIn
Instruments
KaRIn	Ka-band Radar Interferometer
AMR-C	Advanced Microwave Radiometer-C
Altimeter	Nadir Altimeter
DORIS	Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellites
GPSP	Global Positioning System Payload
LRA	Laser Retro-reflector Assembly
Telecom	X-band Telecom
	; Alternate SWOT Mission Patch by NASA

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a satellite altimeter jointly developed and operated by NASA and CNES, the French space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA).^[4] The objectives of the mission are to make the first global survey of the Earth's surface water, to observe the fine details of the ocean surface topography, and to measure how terrestrial surface water bodies change over time.

While past satellite missions like the Jason series altimeters (TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3) have provided variation in river and lake water surface elevations at select locations, SWOT will provide the first truly global observations of changing water levels, stream slopes, and inundation extents in rivers, lakes, and floodplains. In the world's oceans, SWOT will observe ocean circulation at unprecedented scales of 15–25 km (9.3–15.5 mi), approximately an order of magnitude finer than current satellites. It does this using synthetic aperture radar interferometry.^[5] Because it uses wide-swath altimetry technology, SWOT will almost completely observe the world's oceans and freshwater bodies with repeated high-resolution elevation measurements, allowing observations of variations.

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