Yes! The scientific engine of the SWOT satellite, the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, will measure the height of water in Earth’s lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the ocean.

To do that, KaRIn will transmit radar pulses to Earth’s surface and use two antennas to triangulate the return signals that bounce back. Mounted at the ends of a boom 33 feet (10 meters) long, the antennas will collect data over two swaths of Earth’s surface, each of them 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide and located on either side of the satellite.

KaRIn will operate in two modes. A lower-resolution mode over the ocean will involve significant onboard processing of the data to reduce the volume of information sent during downlinks; the higher-resolution mode will be used mainly over land to look at freshwater. (BH)