Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts Dave Williams, left, Barbara Morgan, Benjamin Drew and space station crew member Clayton Anderson, center front, wave to school children in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday.

Boise, Idaho ? America’s students have waited a generation to talk to a teacher in space, and when the chance came Tuesday they made the most of it.

Twenty-one years after the Challenger disaster that claimed teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe, 18 students taking part in a NASA Endeavour linkup at Boise’s Discovery Center of Idaho peppered educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan and fellow crew members with questions on subjects from weightlessness to global warming.

Morgan and astronauts Clay Anderson, Alvin Drew, Jr., and Dave Williams answered questions and did cheer-inducing demonstrations throughout the 20-minute session.

When it was over, several of the students said they hoped to become astronauts.

Brooke Thomas, a sixth-grader at Payette Lakes Middle School in Morgan’s former hometown of McCall, said she was frightened for Morgan’s safety before talking to her, but she felt better afterwards.

“It helped to see her and talk to her and know she’s OK,” Thomas said.

“I’m going to go home and tell my teachers I’m more interested in math and science and becoming an astronaut now.”

Frank Walline, an eighth-grader at Sand Creek Middle School in Idaho Falls, hushed the audience with a question about whether the effects of global warming were visible from space.

Anderson replied that it was possible to see the reduced size of rain forests, the effects of fires and an iceberg that had split in two.

Morgan’s response to a question from Emmett sixth-grader Falyn Henry, on how astronauts drink in the weightlessness of space, brought cheers and laughter.

Dressed in gray pants and a green shirt, her long, weightless hair standing straight up, Morgan unsuccessfully tried to grab a gelatinous glob of fruit juice before retrieving it – successfully – with a straw. The kids voted it the best moment of the session.

Morgan, who has been waiting for her chance in space since she was the backup to teacher-in-space McAuliffe, also got good reviews for lifting two of her fellow crew members and demonstrating the shuttle’s robotic arm.

Asked the most difficult part of the mission, she said there are “some things you can’t prepare for. It was a big surprise to me that for the whole first day I felt like I was upside down.”