Is there usable water on Mars? How does the space environment affect earthworms? What is the effect of El Nino on whale shark migration? What does a rocket flight sound like?

Students nationwide tackled these and many other questions as part of the NASA Student Involvement Program, or NSIP, competition. NSIP is a national education program for grades K through 12 that links students directly with NASA's diverse missions of research, exploration and discovery.

Through this program, student experiments were selected in January 2002 to fly on either a NASA suborbital sounding rocket in June or a future Space Shuttle mission.

NASA's Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi will host the NSIP National Symposium for high school winners and their teachers May 5-8, 2002. The students will present their winning projects from one of the following competition areas: Design a Mission to Mars; Watching Earth Change; and Science and Technology Journalism. Students and NASA scientists and engineers will discuss issues raised by each winning team.

During June, space flight student winners and their teachers will spend a week at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. During their visit the students will work with Wallops personnel to make final experiment preparations and get a first-hand look at the facility operations.

In addition, those participating in the rocket project at Wallops will witness the launch of their experiments, analyze the data and present their findings to other students and NASA engineers and scientists.

Every student who enters the NSIP competition with a qualified entry will receive a certification of participation. First place winners from each judging center in grades K-8 will win a presentation at their school by a NASA representative.

The following Web site provides additional information about the NSIP competition: http://education.nasa.gov/nsip

The Offices of Human Resources and Education, Space Flight, Earth Science and Space Science at NASA Headquarters, Washington, support the NSIP Competition.