Ham, un chimpanzé dans l'espace

Directed by

Jérôme-Cecil Auffret

Written by

Frédéric Fougea, Jérôme-Cecil Auffret

Produced by

Boréales

Docudrama, France, 2006, 48 min

January 31st, 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 where he manages to resist both the high pressure and the strong temperature variations before splashing back down in the Atlantic Ocean. He is thus the first inhabitant of the Earth to come back alive from space.

This movie relates the chimp's incredible itinerary, starting from his birth in the African jungle, and the story of Jeff, his handler who supported and loved him through the two long years of training. Their victory opened the way to the stars for the subsequent NASA astronauts.

Debate with :

• Michel Viso, Exobiologist at the CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales)
• Jérôme-Cécil Auffret, director