A group of students who are members of the Lunar Club at Upper Darby High School are getting the opportunity to present their original research at NASA, writes Kevin Tustin for the Delaware County News Network.

The group is now competing in the Exploration Science Forum at the NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

The Lunar Club’s rising sophomore and junior students are the only high school-level representatives invited to the forum this year. They earned the coveted spot by winning a nationwide high school competition.

The club examined the thickness of the volcanic rock from lava that set on the moon in an area deemed the mare tranquillitatis, which is one of the dark plains formed through ancient volcanoes commonly seen in photographs of the moon.

“This amazing experience gave the students the opportunity to conduct authentic, open-inquiry research, and communicate that research in both written and oral form,” said Roseann Burns, Lunar Club mentor and high school teacher.

Burns, high school vo-tech coordinator Josh Taffel, and planetary geologist Dr. Amanda Nahm guided the students through the research over the course of the school year.

Members of the Lunar Club include Thomas Nguyen, Vince Tran, Most Yeasmin, Isabel Hunt, Kenneth Lin, Galen Farmer, Daniel Gordon, Zachary Thornton, and Chris DeMott.