The silk road in the sky

Chinese astronauts have completed an experiment proposed by four Hong Kong students to determine whether silkworms can live and spin outside the Earth's atmosphere. Honey Tsang reports from Hong Kong.

The unbroken thread of every silkworm stretches more than 1.5 kilometers. It is an apt symbol, tracing a silken strand from the earliest dawn of history to the present, where tiny wriggling silkworm larvae performed their dance of life aboard the Tiangong II space lab, 393 kilometers above the earth.

Early Chinese people held special affection for silkworms and their cocoons. Unwound, the cocoons produced the lustrous fiber that gave birth to an opulent culture, spawning a nation of traders who spread out along what came to be known as the Silk Road.