Launch of the International SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) Mission (NASA Broadcast)

Launch of the Inter­na­tion­al SWOT (Sur­face Water and Ocean Topog­ra­phy) Mis­sion (NASA Broadcast)

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Watch with NASA as we launch an inter­na­tion­al mis­sion to under­stand the Earth­’s water like nev­er before.

SWOT, the Sur­face Water and Ocean Topog­ra­phy mis­sion, will sur­vey near­ly all water on the Earth­’s sur­face for the first time. Track­ing how water lev­els rise and fall over time, SWOT will study ocean fea­tures at ten times the res­o­lu­tion of cur­rent tech­nolo­gies and mea­sure more than a mil­lion lakes and rivers around the globe. 

The obser­va­tions we make with SWOT will help sci­en­tists improve flood fore­casts, build bet­ter mod­els for mon­i­tor­ing droughts, and make more pre­cise pre­dic­tions for ris­ing sea lev­els. SWOT is a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort by NASA and the French space agency Cen­tre Nation­al d’Etudes Spa­tiales (CNES), with con­tri­bu­tions from the Cana­di­an Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency.

SWOT is sched­uled to lift off at 6:46 a.m. EST (1146 UTC) Fri­day, Dec. 16 on a SpaceX Fal­con 9 rock­et from Van­den­berg Space Force Base in Cal­i­for­nia. NASA’s live launch cov­er­age begins at 6 a.m. (1100 UTC).

Learn more about SWOT: 

Cred­it: NASA

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