The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, jointly developed by NASA and French Space Agency (CNES) with contributions from the Canadian and U.K. space agencies, and planned for launch in 2022, is designed to provide a spatially distributed and high-frequency measurement of water elevation data for the hydrology and oceanography communities for the first time [1], [2]. By virtue of its novel observational capability and stated scientific goals, SWOT satellite data are expected to have a profound impact on our understanding of global surface water. Although there have been many satellite missions that can either map water extent or water elevation, SWOT is the first mission that will measure extent and elevation concurrently regardless of cloud cover conditions and with a higher degree of precision.

中文翻译：

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将地表水和海洋地形任务重新想象为地表水的“陆地卫星”[透视图]

由美国国家航空航天局和法国航天局 (CNES) 联合开发，加拿大和英国航天局贡献的地表水海洋地形 (SWOT) 任务，计划于 2022 年发射，旨在提供空间分布和高频测量首次为水文和海洋学界提供水位高程数据[1],[2]. 凭借其新颖的观测能力和既定的科学目标，SWOT 卫星数据有望对我们对全球地表水的理解产生深远影响。尽管已经有许多卫星任务可以绘制水域范围或水位高度图，但 SWOT 是第一个可以同时测量范围和高度的任务，无论云量条件如何，并且具有更高的精度。