Swot

Swot (Surface Water Ocean Topography) is envisioned for 2016 in a joint project including Nasa and Cnes. The goal is to join  both land hydrology and oceanography communities in a single satellite. The technology for Swot should be 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 2 km x 2 km,
• Over land, resolve a spatial sample of 100-m on rivers and 1-km² on lakes, wetlands, or reservoirs with an accuracy of 10 cm and a slope accuracy of 1 cm/1 km for the water level elevations.
• Cover at least 90 percent of the globe. Gaps are not to exceed 10 percent of Earth's surface.

Further information :

• Swot website
• J.C Souyris, OSTST 2010, Upcoming altimeter measurments: explaining interferometric SAR, pdf
• A. Mallet, OSTST 2010, KaRIn/SWOT performance analyse tool; application to near nadir swath extension, pdf