The NASA's Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP) is led by the Arizona State University (ASU) Mars Education Program, a major partner of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. MSIP is based on the National Science Education Standards and includes curriculum on terrestrial planet characteristics, experimental design, and proposal writing. Three spacecraft are now orbiting Mars, sending a constant stream of images back to Earth. One of these, the Mars "Odyssey," has a camera called THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System). THEMIS takes small images of the Martian surface in visible light or infrared wavelengths. In this article, student teams wrote scientific proposals for using the 2001 Mars "Odyssey" orbiter through MSIP. After a 12-week project period, teams were brought together in a media center to present their arguments as to why their proposal was worthy of using the THEMIS camera. The voting was tough, but fair. If a proposal received 10 percent of the votes, it was selected. A total of 10 proposals were sent to ASU, and it accepted all the proposals. The students were given a total of 11 orbits around Mars on April 20, 2005, from which to take their images. About a week after the April 20 orbits, they received a CD-ROM with their results. They had their THEMIS images of volcanoes, channels, and craters. ASU and MSIP have given students in middle school through college an incredible opportunity to do authentic, hands-on science. (Contains 1 figure, 1 resource and 4 online resources.)