Welcome to the SWOT Satellite Mission web site

The SWOT mission will be the first satellite mission dedicated to surface water land hydrology. Given our basic need for fresh water, the most important hydrologic observations that can be made in a basin are of the temporal and spatial variations in water volumes stored in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and wetlands. Unfortunately, we have very poor knowledge of the global dynamics of terrestrial surface waters, and the SWOT satellite mission will provide the global repetitive surface hydrology observations needed.

For the ocean surface topography community the SWOT mission is the follow up of a whole series of very successful radar altimeters (http://earth.esa.int/applications/data_util/RAO.HTM) satellite missions.

Historic: The first satellite radar altimeter was launched on board Skylab in 1974 and the first satellite mission dedicated to the observation of the ocean surface was SEASAT http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/QuickLooks/seasatQL.html in 1978.

Since the launch of TOPEX/Poseidon in 1991, there has been an uninterrupted series of profiling satellite radar altimeters in space.
http://www.cnes.fr/web/810-topex-poseidon.php;
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/topex-20060105.html

• the many highly successful ocean observing radar altimeters(http://www.jason.oceanobs.com/html/missions/tp/satellite_fr.html)
• the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm)
• the development effort of the Wide Swath Ocean Altimeter (WSOA) (http://www.jason.oceanobs.com/html/alti/wsoa_fr.html).