NASA scientists aren't the only folks poring through the near-constant stream of data coming from the Spirit rover on Mars. An international team of students, sponsored by the non-profit Planetary Society and LEGO Company, is trying its hand at planetary science, working out of NASA's rover mission control in rotating weekly shifts.

The effort is part of the society's Red Rover Goes to Mars Project to offer hands-on experience to students interested in space science. The "student astronaut" team consists of 16 teenagers who won their berths on the project through a worldwide essay contest held by the Planetary Society and LEGO.

Each week, two students will sit in the Mars Exploration Rover control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and study mission data and images as they arrive. Students record their efforts online in daily journals, summarizing their activities during their week at JPL.

On-duty Student Astronauts: Vignan Pattamatta, 14, of India and Tan Wei Lin, 14, of Singapore are in the midst of their shift at JPL, which runs from Jan. 22 to Feb. 1. The previous team, Shih-Han Chen, 16,of Taiwan and the U.K, and Abigail Fraeman, 16, of Canada and the U.S. finished their JPL shift on Jan. 26.

It's been an interesting week for the student astronauts at JPL. Not only were they onhand for the Jan. 24 Opportunity landing, but they have also witnessed how mission scientists are coping with their malfunctioning Spirit rover. The robot stopped relaying science data to Earth last week, and engineers have been working to solve what appears to be an onboard computer problem.

"As long as people don't completely lose contact with the rover, there is still a lot of hope that the communication problem can be resolved," wrote Abigail of Spirit's difficulties in a Jan.22 journal entry.

The malfunction did have an upside, Shih-Han added. While engineers work to return Spirit to its former mission self, other science team members have had a chance to pore over previously downlinked images and other data during the activity lull.

"It sure seems like Vignan and I came at a really tense time!" Wei Lin wrote in her Jan. 23 journal. "We were a little disappointed that all the data in the Rover's flash memory appears to be gone, meaning no APXS, no Moessbauer, and no MarsDial images!" Wei Lin and her fellow student astronauts have routinely studied images of Spirit's MarsDial, a sundial, to determine local Martian time and study the amount of dust blowing on the planet.

But mixed in with the anxiety over Spirit at JPL was the excitement of Opportunity's Jan. 24 arrival. The four student astronauts were able to put their best guess for where Opportunity would land on a wall map of the rover's target area before the rover touched down on Mars.

"Two for two!" announced Wei Lin happily after Opportunity's successful landing. " Everything that's happened tonight is just so amazing that there are NO words for it."

Vignan added that Opportunity's arrival lifted the spirits of mission scientists who were a bit disappointed in the still-ailing Spirit. "Today is the first ever time that we have two rovers at once on any other planet!" Vignan wrote.

Abigail and Shih-Han expressed a little sadness as their run at JPL concluded. Both agreed that working on the rover missions has been among the most exciting periods in their lives. Joining Vignan and Wei Lin over the weekend will be the fifth shift of student astronauts, Poland's Maciej Hermanowicz, 17, and 14-year-old Janice DeBerg from the U.S. The fifth shift runs from Jan. 30 to Feb. 8.

The Planetary Society is a non-profit space advocacy organization based in Pasadena, California. Founded in 1980, the society consists of more than 100,000 members from over 140 countries. Individuals interested in joining the organization can do so here.