ISS Students Score High Marks with NASA

Congratulations to the Indian Springs School team of Quinn Balazs ’14, Carlin Laney ’16 and Connor McGarty ’15, who placed second in a nationwide lunar research competition!

The students’ research on the timing of multi-ring basin formation and the lava flows contained within the moon’s Orientale Basin won second place in the High School Lunar Research Projects program, which is sponsored by the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Center for Lunar Science and Exploration.

The ISS team’s research was selected by a panel of lunar scientists from NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the honor, and their abstract and poster summarizing their research will be showcased at the 2012 NASA Lunar Science Forum in July at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.

Each of the 18 teams who entered the competition spent the fall semester completing a basic lunar geology course, and then embarked on a standards-based, data-rich, authentic lunar science research project aimed at increasing the understanding of the moon.

The Indian Springs team’s teacher was ISS Science Department Chair Lisa Balazs, and their mentor was Dr. Cari Corrigan with the Smithsonian Institution.