FORT MILL, S.C. — Talk about out of this world: a group of sixth graders in Fort Mill won a national NASA contest.

What You Need To Know

• A group of sixth graders in Fort Mill won a national NASA contest 

• Students at Forest Creek Middle School won the NASA TechRise Student Challenge 

• They are building a phone case that will be attached to a NASA-sponsored high altitude balloon

Students at Forest Creek Middle School were among 60 other winning teams of students from across the country to win the NASA TechRise Student Challenge.

This is a STEM competition for grades 6-12.

This year’s challenge was to design a science or technology experiment that will be tested on a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon.

The design had to be something that can help with space exploration and the study of Earth.

The students at Forest Creek designed a phone case that could protect a phone in different atmospheres.

Joanna Barney, a science teacher at Forest Creek Middle School, is leading the students through this challenge.

“They’re gonna create phone cases made of different materials and see which one is best if you were to take it to another atmosphere so that would help our pilots, that could help astronauts,” Barney said.

“Maybe in the future, like, we could use phones in like, in space, like in the future maybe if we could get to Mars,” said student Aahil Raza.

Students are excited.

“What I’m most excited about is building it and then coding it,” said student Katelyn Stokes.

The students meet once a week with a NASA engineer to discuss their design.

Once completed, the phone case will be placed in a box that will be attached to the balloon.

The balloon will ascend 70,000 feet and float for four hours.

Students will also be responsible for building the sensors that will be put on the box so they can measure data as the balloon is floating.

“So we’ll get data from the machines that we're building and we’ll be able to monitor the data when it goes up,” Barney explained.

NASA awarded the students $1,500 to buy the materials needed to make this idea come to life.

There are also two schools in North Carolina that won this challenge, including Cross Creek Early College High School in Fayetteville and Nesbitt Discovery Academy in Asheville.