Their parents went to space, but these silkworms are settling for a secondary school in Hong Kong

Descendants of silkworms taken aboard manned Chinese space mission donated to Tseung Kwan O school that originally suggested the idea

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The Shenzhou-11 spacecraft carrying astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong and six silkworms blasts off from the launch pad in the Gobi Desert. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:03pm, 2 Oct 2017Updated: 11:02pm, 2 Oct 2017

A dozen silkworms whose parents took a spin around the planet have been donated to a Hong Kong secondary school.

Last October, six of the insects were taken on-board the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, China’s sixth manned space mission and its longest to date, which saw two astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, spend 30 days orbiting in the Tiangong-2 space laboratory.

The silkworms which have been taken on-board the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. Photo: Handout.

The out-of-this-world experiment to study how the silkworms transformed in a weightless environment had been suggested by pupils at Christian and Missionary Alliance Sun Kei Secondary School in Tseung Kwan O. The initial results showed that the silk spun by worms with extraterrestrial experience was stronger than those on Earth.

On Monday, the astronauts donated the descendants of these “space silkworms” to the school, who will study them to see if the favourable variation will be inherited. Chow Wing-hei, a physics teacher at the school and in charge of the silkworm project, said pupils would take turns to care for the silkworms in the school’s laboratory.

The initial results showed that silk spun by space-going silkworms was stronger than those who remained grounded on Earth. Photo: Corbis