PHOTO COURTESY OF MAUREEN ADAMS In a Pitts stunt airplane, Lampasas resident Maureen Adams experienced as many as 6 Gs during a 12-day Teachers in Space training program near San Jose, Calif. Explaining the operation of rockets and the effects of weightlessness just got easier for educator Maureen Adams.

The Lampasas resident, principal of West Ward Elementary School in Killeen, recently returned from 12 days of training as part of the Space Frontier Foundation's Teachers in Space program. The program prepares educators for sub-orbital flights and encourages them to share with their students, and with fellow teachers, the knowledge and experience they gain.

Mrs. Adams, who also teaches fifth-grade science at West Ward, joined six other teachers from across the United States for the training session at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Rick Searfoss, a former space shuttle commander, flew the "Pathfinder Seven" teachers at Skylark North, a glider school where Air Force test pilots and shuttle astronauts train.

Mrs. Adams volunteered for the first flight, which she said was the highlight of her trip. She enjoyed experiencing complete loops, flying upside down over another aircraft and feeling five times the force of gravity pushing on her body.

Her pilot also simulated weightlessness in space by cruising the stunt plane high into the air and then de- scending straight down.

"It's just sort of like floating," Mrs. Adams said.

The Lampasan's suborbital flight, a 30- to 45- minute trip that will take her at least 50 miles past Earth's atmosphere, is scheduled for the summer of 2011. At her sports-loving students' requests, the administrator -- who twice has flown student robotic experiments for weightless NASA flights -- will study various aspects of baseball in a zero-gravity environment.

Through its collaboration with the United States Rocket Academy and five private spaceflight companies, the Space Frontier Foundation hopes not only to boost space exploration but also to generate greater interest in science, technology, engineering and math classes. Teachers in Space organizers aim to launch 200 educators per year on private suborbital flights during the next 10 years.

"It's about inspiring children," Mrs. Adams said.

With help from its resident "astronaut," West Ward Elementary -- where Mrs. Adams has been principal for 10 years -- has become a Killeen Independent School District science leader. The campus, which serves primarily a low-income population, boasted a 91 percent passing rate on the science portion of this year's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test.

West Ward joins just seven other Texas campuses as a NASA Explorer School, meaning students have ac- cess to a variety of NASA information and resources. The Killeen school also operates a robotics laboratory for art instruction and hosts "Science Week" each October. The annual festival features science presentations, demonstrations and rocket launches, and it has attracted scholars from NASA, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University.

With experts from a variety of scientific fields cooperating with West Ward, a prompt response to a student's most profound query rarely is more than a telephone call or e-mail away, Mrs. Adams said.

"They raise the bar on the questions they ask," she said of her students, "because they're used to getting answers about everything."

The similar curiosity of her son, Tom Adams, in- spired Mrs. Adams to devote herself to space research and education. When Tom, a Lampasas High School graduate, was 10, he begged to attend NASA's summer U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. Mrs. Adams took him as a reward for earning all A's.

Aerospace topics captured the imagination of the Ohio University theater alumna, and Mrs. Adams has returned to Space Camp for nine years as an instructor. Her fine arts background complements Mrs. Adams' scientific pursuits, as advances in both fields require creative thinking, she said.

Like artists, scientists can profit from a spark of inspiration -- exactly what Mrs. Adams believes her "astronaut" adventures will provide her students.

"It's really fun to see students get excited about science," she said.