Middle school astronomers

Gullies beneath a small crater on Mars
This handout image from NASA shows gullies beneath a small crater on the rim of a larger crater on September 2005. The picture was taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. NASA claims the image supports the hypothesis that the fluid responsible for the gullies came from beneath the ground, either as ground water or melting of subsurface ice.
Photo by NASA/JPL-MSSS via Getty Images

Several eighth-graders are anxiously awaiting the photos NASA's Odyssey orbiter plans to snap.

The Jackson Middle School astronomy students chose targets they wanted photographs of and submitted requests to the Mars Education Program at Arizona State University, the educational division for NASA's Mars project.

The program accepted five requests from the Champlin students. Carla-Rae Smith, astronomy teacher at Jackson Middle School, explained how her students convinced NASA to approve their requests.

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