Eight Northshore School District students are among 156 high school juniors taking part in phase one of the 2014-15 Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) program.

The five Northshore students from Inglemoor are Elaine Xiong, Abhinav Agnani, Lawrence Luo, Kate Poon and Anand Sekar.

WAS is a two-part program focused on topics in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Phase One is a five-month distance learning course designed in partnership with NASA and the University of Washington, which provides students the opportunity to earn five college credits while learning about the history of NASA, the space environment around Earth and the future of human space exploration. The top 120 scoring Phase One students receive an invitation to participate in a six-day Summer Residency held at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. In each summer session, four student teams cooperate to plan a human mission to Mars with support from professional engineers/scientists, university students and certificated educators. Participants also receive briefings from aerospace professionals, tour engineering facilities and compete in hands-on engineering challenges.