January 31, 1961: a Mercury rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral. The
astronaut on board is a three-year-old chimpanzee named Ham. The young chimp
is shot into the stratosphere before splashing back down in the Atlantic
Ocean. He is thus the first ’earthling’ to come back alive from space.
This drama tells the famous chimp’s remarkable story, based on reconstructions
of events surrounding the mission and footage shot by NASA at the time.
