• 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, and a precision not to exceed 0.8 cm when averaged over the area.
• Over land, download the raw data for ground processing and produce a water mask able to resolve 100 meter wide rivers and lakes of 250 meter² in size, wetlands, or reservoirs. Associated with this mask will be water level elevations with an accuracy of 10 cm and a slope accuracy of 1 cm/1 km.
• Cover at least 90 percent of the globe. Gaps are not to exceed 10 percent of Earth's surface.
• SWOT will have a mission lifetime of 3 years

• The information in the Documents and Resources section may be helpful for current and future SWOT scientists.

• An Introduction to SWOT (PDF, 12.92 MB) by Project Scientist Lee-Lueng Fu.
• 'Where There’s Water… There’s SWOT’ e-brochure

• Science Team Members and their Projects
• Science Definition Team page
• Science Team Meetings