COEUR d'ALENE — Excitement was written across their faces as they opened a box from NASA.

Four Lake City High School sophomores won a chance to make their experiment proposal a reality.

The students, George Lanigan, Marcus Davis, Parker Morville and Nathan Edmonds, joined the list of 57 winning teams from schools around the country in the NASA TechRise Student Challenge.

“None of us were expecting to win,” Nathan said.

“There were just so many applicants,” George said. “They told us they would get back to us and then we didn’t hear anything for a while.”

Parker said they were all thrilled when they heard they were one of the winning teams selected from nearly 600 teams representing 5,000 sixth- through 12th-grade students from across the country.

“I thought it would be really fun to enter because that’s kind of the field that I know we’ve all been looking into,” said George, team leader for the project. “We all have an interest in the aerospace sciences.”

For the competition, the team had to write a proposal for creating an experiment that will autonomously operate and collect data from the edge of space aboard a suborbital rocket or high-altitude balloon.

The team chose to create the balloon, which must stay four hours in the air at 70,000 feet.

“We all got together after school and went to the library where it’s nice and quiet,” Marcus said.

The friends heard about the contest late in the game, and only had about a week to submit their proposal for an experiment in early November.

“I think we spent two or three days after school in the library working on it,” Nathan said.

The team's project focused on collecting atmospheric samples at different altitudes of the balloon flight. The project will collect data to test air quality, chemical composition and pollutants.

The plan is to have a sample collected every 5,000 or 10,000 feet all the way to the maximum altitude of 70,000 feet.

George said using the information, they'll be able to understand what chemicals are present and which are absent at certain altitudes.

“This could aid the future of Earth by showing us the changes through time of this composition and what is causing the atmosphere to change,” he said. “It will allow us to see the impact that humans have had in the environment and atmosphere, and show us what is most at risk.”

The team, called the Timberwolves after their school’s mascot, titled their project Testing Air Quality, Chemical Composition, and Pollutants.

“We’re all scientifically inclined; we’re all very much chasing education,” George said. “I think that’s kind of what brought us together.”

George said his goal has always been to be an aerospace engineer for NASA.

Marcus said he's interested in mining asteroids for their raw materials.

“I think mining Earth is like having a fire in your room,” Marcus said. “It’s not a great idea now because we live on Earth. We don’t need it to be a mess.”

The team received a kit from NASA Wednesday morning that includes materials for the project. They also received $1,500 from NASA to help with costs.

The timeline is to have the project built in June, turned into NASA by October and launched in early 2023.

Other winning proposals included measuring greenhouse gases, space farm irrigation systems, lunar dust mitigation, exploring human health in space, and understanding the effects of microgravity on physical phenomena ranging from the behavior of waves in liquids to the effectiveness of inkjet printing.

Nathan said they expect to find some challenges once they start.

“I think that’s what’s going to make you successful, the problems you run into,” teacher and mentor Jamie Esler, an environmental and physical science teacher at Lake City High School, told the students. “You are good problem solvers.”

“It’s just a learning experience, really,” George said.

“It’s a pretty cool thing to say that NASA gave us 1,500 bucks to build an experiment,” Nathan said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Esler said the students all take a really rigorous course load at school.

“They are very academically committed students, and they’re pursuing something beyond that,” Esler said. “I just think that speaks a lot to the quality of their character. I think it speaks a lot to our school.”

Esler said they try to set an academic culture at Lake City High School to encourage students to just keep pursuing things they want to learn about.

“They did this all on their own,” Esler said.

George said having Esler to support them was important in allowing the team to find success.

“(He’s) frankly the best science teacher we’ve ever experienced,” George said.

“It’s very important to have (Esler) because I don’t think NASA would be comfortable sending $1,500 to us four,” Nathan said, laughing.

Along with Esler, George said a key to success starts at home.

“With the support of our families, it’s just amazing what we’re able to do,” George said.