The Summer Science Program (SSP) is an intense six-week summer program for intellectually talente high school students. The program is based on a collaborative research project in celestial mechanics. Students study astronomy, physics, spherical trigonometry, and calculus while working to take photographic plates of an asteroid, measure its position, and calculate its orbit. The measured asteroid coordinates (not the orbit results) are submitted to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A large number of alumni from the program eventually matriculate at prestigious institutions such as Caltech, MIT, Stanford and Ivy League schools.