Sky Lights

Last September, NASA launched the QuikTOMS satellite to keep a close eye on Earth's ozone layer. But a rocket malfunction 83 seconds into the flight sent the spacecraft into a useless orbit and threw scientists into a small panic. They now have to rely on increasingly shaky data from QuikTOMS's aging predecessor, the 6-year-old TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) satellite, to monitor the battered ozone shield that protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays.