Chinese space chicks are go!

The eggs, along with two dummy astronauts, were blasted into space inside the Shenzhou III spacecraft

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- It was one small peck for a chicken, but for three new hatchlings in a Chinese laboratory it was the latest stage in a fantastic voyage no chicken has traveled before.

The three "space chicks", hatched Tuesday at a university in Beijing, were blasted into space last month aboard China's Shenzhou III spacecraft, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

During the seven-day flight the birds -- one female and two males -- orbited the Earth as eggs 108 times before plummeting back to the ground on April 1.

Despite being subjected to the intense pressures of take-off and re-entry, as well as a week in the vacuum of space, none of them cracked.

Indeed the chickens were chosen from a Chinese local "black boned" breed considered by mission controllers to be most suited to the eggs-cellent adventure.

Space pioneers

Scientists say the fact the chickens survived proves the spacecraft's sophistication

Chinese scientists hope the Shenzhou III spacecraft will one day soon carry China's first astronauts into space -- the chicken flight was the latest stage of testing for the capsule's life-support systems.

Space experts believe such research will be key to developing a successful and safe space transport system.

According to Xinhua, scientists chose the "black boned" breed because of their very pure bloodline, enabling any genetic variation caused by space flight to be easily be tracked.

As well as other biological experiments and dummy astronauts, six other eggs were carried on the spacecraft -- but the news agency did not say what happened to them.

The project's goal is to send a Chinese astronaut into space within three years.

Professor Yang Ning of the China University of Agriculture told Xinhua the fact the chicks had survived proved the sophisticated state of the spacecraft's systems.

With chicks of both sexes successfully hatched he said researchers would be able to learn a lot more by breeding them and studying their offspring.