Swot

Swot (Surface Water Ocean Topography) is a joint project including Nasa, Cnes, the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. The goal is to join both land hydrology and oceanography communities in a single satellite. The technology for Swot is a Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn, 0.86 cm wavelength).

During the 3 years of lifetime mission, the main goals are:

• Provide sea surface heights (SSH) and terrestrial water heights over a 120 km wide swath with a +/-10 km gap at the nadir track.
• Over the deep oceans, provide SSH within each swath with a posting every 1 km x 1 km
• Over land, produce a water mask able to resolve 100 meter wide rivers and lakes of 250x250 m in size, wetlands, or reservoirs. Associated with this mask are water level elevations with an accuracy of 10 cm and a slope accuracy of 1.7 cm/1 km (when averaging over water area >1 km²).
• Cover at least 90 percent of the globe. Gaps are not to exceed 10 percent of Earth's surface.