May 2, 2014

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, and Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall sign an agreement to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, Friday, May 2, 2014 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ NASA and the French space agency Centre National dtudes Spatiales (CNES) have agreed to jointly build, launch, and operate a spacecraft to conduct the first-ever global survey of Earths surface water and to map ocean surface height with unprecedented detail.

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall signed an agreement Friday at NASA Headquarters in Washington to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. The two agencies began initial joint studies on the mission in 2009 and plan to complete preliminary design activities in 2016, with launch planned in 2020.

With this mission, NASA builds on a legacy of Earth science research and our strong relationship with CNES to develop new ways to observe and understand our changing climate and water resources, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The knowledge well gain from SWOT will help decision makers better analyze, anticipate, and act to influence events that will affect us and future generations.

SWOT is one of the NASA missions recommended in the National Research Councils 2007 decadal survey of Earth science priorities. The satellite will survey 90 percent of the globe, studying Earths lakes, rivers, reservoirs and ocean to aid in freshwater management around the world and improve ocean circulation models and weather and climate predictions.

This new agreement covers the entire life cycle of the mission, from spacecraft design and construction through launch, science operations, and eventual decommissioning. NASA will provide the SWOT payload module, the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, the Microwave Radiometer (MR) with its antenna, a laser retroreflector array, a GPS receiver payload, ground support, and launch services.

CNES will provide the SWOT spacecraft bus, the KaRIn instruments Radio Frequency Unit (RFU), the dual frequency Ku/C-band Nadir Altimeter, the Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) receiver package, satellite command and control, and data processing infrastructure.

NASA and CNES began collaborating on missions to monitor ocean surface changes in the 1980s. From the TOPEX/Poseidon mission launched in 1992 to the Jason-1 mission launched in 2001 to the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission launched in 2008, the collaboration has produced critical information on sea-level rise as well as El Nio causing world-wide impact.

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NASA-CNES Move Forward with Global Water and Ocean Surface Mission