Mission

The SWOT mission brings together communities focused on a better understanding of the world’s oceans and its terrestrial surface waters.

International partners have joined forces to develop this satellite mission to make the first global survey of Earth’s surface water, observe the fine details of the ocean’s surface topography, and measure how water bodies change over time.

Partners

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and Centre National D’Études Spatiales with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and United Kingdom Space Agency.

Launch vehicle and launch date

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for SWOT. Launch is targeted for November 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service.

Approximately the first six months after launch, it will be in a ‘fast-sampling’ phase with a 1-day repeat orbit at an altitude of 857km (532.5 miles). This initial period will focus on achieving calibration and validation objectives while studying rapidly changing phenomena. This will provide a global series of experiments with fine-scale ocean campaigns, as well as ground-based data for comparison with SWOT’s daily 2-D sea surface height data. The fast-sampling phase will end with an increase in the observatory’s altitude to 891 km (553.6 miles).

The next phase lasting three years, will have a 21-day repeat orbit to balance global coverage and frequent sampling. This non-sun-synchronous orbit was chosen to minimize tidal aliasing and ensure coverage of major water bodies on land. SWOT’s 120-km (~75-mile) swath width will result in overlapping measurements over most of the globe with an average revisit time of 11 days.

Launching in 2022 SWOT will make NASA’s first ever global survey of Earth’s surface water.