"Eight Dartmouth engineering students have been plotting the ideal garden for future inhabitants of Mars," writes the Valley News. "And theirs is no sci-fi mission. They’re competing in NASA’s BIG (Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing) Idea Challenge to create a greenhouse concept that could be used in an actual Mars outpost in the not-too-distant future.

"'We’re just really excited to be part of this,' Zoe Rivas, 22, of Twin Falls, Idaho, said in a phone interview last week, prior to leaving for NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. 'It was really cool to see it all come together.'"