WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Inside the SpaceX facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, a crane is used to lift the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite for mating to the payload adapter on Dec. 5, 2022. A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency, SWOT will be the first satellite to survey nearly all water on Earth’s surface. SWOT is scheduled to lift off aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg on Dec. 15, 2022, at 3:46 a.m. PST