Satnews Daily
November 23rd, 2016

SWOT's Up With NASA & SpaceX?


Now contracted to provide launch services for NASA's Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is SpaceX.

The launch is targeted for April of 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The total cost for NASA to launch SWOT is approximately $112 million, which includes the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration as well as tracking, data and telemetry support.

Designed to make the first-ever global survey of Earth’s surface water, in addition to high-resolution ocean measurements, the SWOT mission will collect detailed measurements of how water bodies on Earth change over time. The satellite will survey at least 90 percent of the globe, studying Earth's lakes, rivers, reservoirs and oceans, at least twice every 21 days, aid in freshwater management around the world, to improve ocean circulation models and weather and climate predictions. The SWOT spacecraft will be jointly developed and managed by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).

NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service. The SWOT Project office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages spacecraft development for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

swot.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/

nasa.gov

spacex.com