Watch the latest water satellite unfold itself in space NASAJPL
But before it can do that, the satellite would need to unfold its large mast and antenna panels after successfully deploying the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft. The mission monitors and controls the satellite using telemetry data, but it also equipped spacecraft with four customized commercial cameras to record the action.
The antennas successfully deployed over four days, a process that was completed on Dec. 22. The two cameras focused on the KaRIn antennas captured the mast extending out from the spacecraft and locking in place but stopped short of capturing the antennas being fully deployed Thirty-three feet apart, at either end of the mast, the two antennas belong to the groundbreaking Ka-band Radar Interferometer instrument. Designed to capture precise measurements of the height of water in Earth's freshwater bodies and the ocean, KaRIn will see eddies, currents, and other ocean features less than 13 miles across. It will also collect data on lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres and rivers wider than 330 feet across.
This series of images shows the deployment of the solar arrays that power the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite. The mission, led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales , captured the roughly 10-minute process with two of the four commercial cameras aboard the satellite . SWOT launched Dec. 16, 2022, at 3:46 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and the arrays started their deployment at 5:01 a.m. PST.
KaRIn will do this by bouncing radar pulses off the surface of water on Earth and receiving the signals with both of those antennas, collecting data along a swath that's 30 miles wide on either side of the
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