The students in Jeff Tracys biology class last week were making paper helicopters and adjusting them to see how far and accurately they could fly.

In coming months, they could be developing experiments that could travel through space to the International Space Station.

This is just an amazing opportunity for our school and our students, said Tracy, a science teacher at Valley Center High School. This is real science, not just content in the classroom.

Valley Center is one of 24 communities to be accepted as a candidate for Mission 3 of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program. The program, part of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, is designed to give students hands-on experience designing, building, testing and conducting experiments for space flight.

The schools first hurdle is financial: It needs to secure $20,000 in donations or pledges by Wednesday to participate.

Its a lot of money, but we are optimistic, said Jamie Lewis, principal at Valley Center High School.

Weve had a good response so far. With all the aerospace companies and other businesses here locally, were hoping the community really embraces this opportunity for our students.

If the school meets the Wednesday deadline and is approved to participate, students enrolled in mid- to upper-level science classes including biology, chemistry, physics and statistics would work in teams to brainstorm experiments that could be tested in low gravity.

A review board would narrow the experiments to three finalists, and those would advance to the next round of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program. The program then would select one Valley Center project to fly in low Earth orbit and then on to the International Space Station.

The program provides each participating community a research mini-laboratory capable of supporting one microgravity experiment and launch services to fly the mini-lab to the space station in early April 2013.

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Valley Center students hope to raise enough money to compete in space education program