Inside the SpaceX facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, both halves of the SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing are moved to enclose the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite on Dec. 8, 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.
Photographer USSF 30th Space Wing/Joshua Duff
Album SpaceX_SWOT
Location SpaceX Facility, VSFB
Date December 31, 2013