Some Moroccan students and teachers have spent part of the summer heading into space by way of the United States.

The 12 students and two teachers from Morocco were among hundreds from throughout the United States and other countries who spent a week at Space Camp learning what it takes to travel to outer space: science, technology, hard work and cooperation.

Moroccan American Kamal Oudrhiri, a senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said teamwork is crucial to NASA's success.

"In NASA, whether we land on another planet or send a human mission, there are hundreds of people working very closely together to ensure the success of the mission," he said.

The Moroccans' week at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, home to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, was sponsored by the U.S. State Department. The students learned the challenges of space travel by participating in numerous hands-on activities that culminated in a simulated space shuttle mission at week's end.

Mariam Zerkti El-Ayadi, 16, said she applied for the program through the U.S. Embassy in Rabat because she wants to be an astronaut. By her third day at Space Camp, she realized that it takes a lot of people, and a lot of coordination, to send someone into orbit and beyond.

"I like the teamwork," El-Ayadi said. "I like everything that we learn about rockets and how you work them and how you work as a team."

And work as a team they do. Over the week, the Moroccans and the other students learned how communication and coordination are essential to the success of any space mission.

Al Whitaker, director of media relations at the space center, said training is rigorous and days are long -- up to 14 hours, with short breaks.

"We want to push them. We want to tax them. We want them to sweat and work for it, but we want them to be successful," Whitaker said. "We want them to go home and say, 'We landed that thing' with this feeling of accomplishment."

Moroccan students at Space Camp learned firsthand about space travel.

Students learn on much of the same equipment used to prepare NASA astronauts. This includes gravity trainers, to simulate walking on the moon, and the Manned Maneuvering Unit, the backpack once worn by astronauts during spacewalks on shuttle missions. Then there is the G-force room.

"They are in a round room that is spinning rather quickly, and they are held in place by gravity," Whitaker said, adding that this training can cause nausea.

Perhaps one of the most challenging exercises is the Multi Access Trainer, used for the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. It helped train astronauts on what to do if their capsule slipped out of its proper trajectory on reentry from orbit. This, Oudrhiri said, is another of the week's important lessons.

"It becomes very clear that most of the time that things don't go as planned," he said. "So what do you do? This is part of teaching them the skill of troubleshooting. How do you troubleshoot? First of all, you have to understand the problem, because without understanding the root cause, you are not going to be able to solve it."

Ouidad Infi, one of the two Moroccan teachers in the program, said the Space Camp experience will change the way she teaches.

"In Morocco, we've got very good students, but most of our courses are very theoretical, so it would be very interesting if we could bring such practical things into the classroom," Infi said.

Before the trip to Space Camp, the students participated in a pre-departure orientation at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat that included a teleconference with Oudrhiri, calling from California. Oudrhiri shared his experiences with NASA and dispelled some of the myths the students had about what it takes to work at NASA. For one thing, they learned that not all NASA employees need to be mathematical geniuses -- they just need to be the best at what they do.

"You don't really need to be in physics and math to work at NASA. They didn't know that," Oudrhiri said, adding that students must have high grades to be considered for NASA jobs. "We have people in biology, in different fields, in chemistry, in medicine, writers and graphic designers. They were like, 'Oh, wow! So I can work at NASA!'"

The camp is one of many programs that the U.S. Embassy in Rabat sponsors to reach out to Moroccan youth and to promote scientific and technological exchanges at all levels. NASA astronaut Robert L. Satcher visited Morocco this year to share his experiences aboard the Space Shuttle and International Space Station with secondary and college students. President Obama's science envoy, Elias A. Zerhouni, visited Moroccan leaders to encourage expanded scientific and technological exchanges between the two countries.

Interest in Space Camp was huge among Morocco's youth. The U.S. Embassy was inundated with inquiries over the phone and on its Facebook page, and more than 100 students met the rigorous requirements to be interviewed for the program.

El-Ayadi said the trip will have a positive impact on her future and she will encourage her friends to apply.

"I'll tell them that you get to learn a lot from it and that you get to meet new people, new cultures, you get to interact with amazing persons," she said. "It is really, definitely an opportunity to seize and to grab."