Communications & Power Industries Receives Prestigious Contract To Develop Ka-band Extended Interaction Klystron For SWOT Satellite

Aug. 19, 2014

Communications & Power Industries Canada Inc. (CPI Canada) has been awarded a $3.3 million contract from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to fund the design modifications and development of a Ka-band Extended Interaction Klystron (EIK) for the Surface Water & Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission.

The SWOT mission is a joint mission between NASA and the French Space Agency (CNES) that is focused on a better understanding of the world's oceans and its terrestrial surface waters. U.S. and French oceanographers and hydrologists have joined forces, with assistance from Canada and the United Kingdom, to develop this new space mission in order to conduct the first global survey of Earth's surface water, observe the fine details of the oceans' surface topography and measure how bodies of water change over time. The SWOT mission will use wide-swath altimetry technology to produce high-resolution elevation measurements of the ocean surface and the surface of lakes, reservoirs and wetlands. The mission, currently planned for launch in 2020, is expected to be of great utility to Environment Canada for hydrological and meteorological monitoring and forecasting and to Fisheries and Oceans Canada for ocean science and forecasting.

NASA will provide the SWOT payload module, which will include the 35 GHz Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument. With CPI Canada's 35 GHz EIK, CSA will provide the enabling technology for the space-based radar.

"Scientists' current ability to measure the changing amount of water held in lakes is limited, as only 15 percent of Earth's lakes are presently measured from space. The SWOT mission will inventory more than one million bodies of water in Canada, and it is expected to yield a better understanding of how climate-induced changes can impact freshwater resources worldwide," said Joe Caldarelli, president of CPI Canada. "Using CPI Canada's high-power EIK to enable the SWOT radar, the mission can collect more complete water information. For the past decade, CPI Canada has been working with several international space agencies to develop the technology necessary for this vital program, and we look forward to continuing to contribute to the SWOT mission."