The multi-agency mission launches Thursday (Dec. 15).
, and its role in climate change, Katherine Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said in a livestreamed Tuesday NASA briefing.
SWOT has a new measurement system on board named KaRIn, which stands for Ka-band Radar Interferometer. Ka-band is a part of the microwave spectrum of light and can collect data at high resolution, thanks to twin antennas positioned roughly 33 feet apart — about half the length of a tennis court, NASA officials say.
Also on board are an X-band radio communications system to send the data back to scientists, a radiometer to correct for the delay in receiving signals from moving water, a traditional altimeter, and a thermal management system to keep the satellite stable in the extreme heat and cold of space.An animation of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite collecting data from space.
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