Testing: Space-bound US-European water mission passes finals

Before any NASA mission is launched, the spacecraft goes through weeks of harsh treatment. It's strapped to a big table that shakes as hard as the pounding of a rocket launch. It's bombarded with louder noise than a stadium rock concert. It's frozen, baked, and irradiated in a vacuum chamber that simulates the extremes of space. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission (SWOT), a collaborative U.S.-French mission to monitor all the water on Earth's surface, has passed these major tests. Now...