In the spirit of "faster, better, cheaper," NASA plans to build and launch in less than 13 months the next in the series of TOMS (Total Ozone MappingSpectrometer) instruments. The QuikTOMS instrument will be launched in August 2000 as a secondary payload aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. rocket to continuously monitor changes in global ozone as well as sulfur dioxide and ash from large volcanic eruptions and smoke from forest fires.

They're each about the size of a large birthday cake, weigh about as much as a desktop computer, and are smart enough to fly in formation far from Earth while they test new technologies. They are three very small satellites, called the Nanosat Constellation Trailblazer mission, that NASA selected today NASA as the agency's latest mission in the New Millennium Program. The mission will validate methods of operating several spacecraft as a system, and test eight technologies in the harsh space environment near the boundary of Earth's protective magnetosphere.