A Chinese soup spoon inspired Professor Yung Kai-leung to design a robot tool to pick up rocks on the moon.
The device, still in the prototype stage, will be attached to a four-metre-long robotic arm and put on board China's unmanned Chang'e-5 rocket due to land on the moon in 2017.
If all goes to plan, it will scoop up stones from the moon's surface and put them in a container to be sent back to Earth.
Yung is the associate head of Hong Kong Polytechnic University's (PolyU) industrial and systems engineering department. His team has been given the job of collecting rock samples in the final phase of China's first moon exploration programme.
Yung approached the design task by asking himself a simple question: 'Why is a Chinese ceramic spoon so different from a Western metal spoon?'
'A ceramic spoon is good for drinking soup because the material won't get too hot and is easy to scoop out from a deep bowl. A Western spoon is better for eating out of a flat bowl.'