Satellites reveal stunningly detailed maps of Earth’s seafloors

By Skyler Ware – LiveScience

A newly-deployed satellite has created the most-detailed map yet of the ocean floor, finding hundreds of hills and underwater volcanoes that were previously missed.

A new satellite has mapped Earth’s ocean floors in unprecedented detail, a new study reveals. .

The first year of measurements from NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, launched in December 2022 and developed by NASA and France’s Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales, enabled researchers to study the boundaries between continents and identify underwater hills and volcanoes that are too small to be detected by earlier satellites.