A group of Westhill High School science students is ready to make a trip across the country to study glacial features on Mars. Later this week, 12 students from ninth to 12th grade will be travelling to Arizona State University's Mars Flight Facility. Our Brad Vivacqua is outside of Westhill High School and joins us now with more on this.

  To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- These students have been spending a lot of their free time studying Mars and this is what they get for all their hard work. This group of students has been meeting once a week after school since September to work on this Mars Imaging Project which is sponsored by NASA and Arizona State University.

Earth science teacher Jean Pounder helped the students submit a research proposal about the glacial features of Mars. The group has been selected to work with NASA scientists to use a high tech camera to photograph the surface of the planet.

The students will take the information they gain over the next few days and incorporate it into their final research paper.

"It will be published on the Arizona State University Mars Student Imaging Website. And so, when they go to apply for college and for work later on in life, they can say that they are published scientists," said teacher Jean Pounder.

"I'm very excited, because not a lot of people study Mars and I think it will be a good experience to do something that people haven't done before," said student Christine Kosciewicz.

The students will be leaving for Phoenix Arizona tomorrow and will spend three days out west. They will also get to check out some other sites including the Grand Canyon.

A few years ago, some different students were selected to study wind patterns on Mars. Every year, this group works hard to do fundraising and they also get some help from Lockheed Martin to make the trip possible.

To learn more about efforts to teach today's youth about science and technology, go toconnectamillionminds.com. It's an initiative of our parent company Time Warner Cable.