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Thirty-six of the world’s top high school science students have been tracking the course of an asteroid as part of the 55th annual Summer Science Program (SSP) at ���ϰٿ�. The students, from 14 states and six countries, attend college-level lectures during the day and then measure the speck of light from the near-Earth asteroid during the evening.

Working in teams of three, students have been taking a series of telescopic images of the asteroid, measuring its precise position and writing software to predict its future position from those measurements. “They may even predict a collision with Earth thousands or millions of years in the future,” says Richard Bowdon, SSP executive director. “This intense, hands-on research experience gives students life-changing inspiration and preparation to study science or engineering in college.”

The students work with professors, meet prominent guest speakers and enjoy behind-the-scenes tours of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

The four-week program moved to ���ϰٿ� in 2010 after 51 years in Ojai. “Everyone here is extremely supportive, and the facilities are perfect for our program, especially the 24-inch Keck telescope,” Bowdon says.

SSP is operated by an independent non-profit in cooperation with ���ϰٿ�, Caltech, MIT, and New Mexico Tech. For more information, please visit or contact Richard Bowdon at (919) 439-7759 or rbowdon@ssp.org.