I AM filled with more terror than I have ever known. I am strapped tightly to my seat. Wires are attached to my chest and everything is being monitored. A voice crackles through my headset but my mind is not tuned to it. Instead, I am thinking of life, death and tall green trees. My stomach is clenched tight. I don’t think I will survive the journey.

The whole cockpit is shuddering and I am shaken violently. I feel the acceleration of the space capsule pressing me into my seat. I can move my arms but that is pretty much all. Everything seems to be out of my control.

I hear the words, “We have lift-off!”

My head is spinning. A feeling of claustrophobia overwhelms me. I want to be free once more.

“Vital signs are OK,” the voice says.

I want to tell the voice that I don’t feel so well, but a shrill “Ee-ee” is all I can manage to scream. For nine minutes, the voice continues and I remain pinned to my seat. Then suddenly I hear, “Leaving Earth’s atmosphere.”

The sound of the engine dies down and instantaneously I feel totally weightless. The sudden change makes me quite light-headed. My headset bursts into life again. There is cheering and clapping in the control room. People seem to be in jubilation. If this mission is successful, I will be the first living being to reach Mars.

Soon the sound of jubilation dies down and there is total silence. I can hear only the sound of my breathing. A few lights on my console are blinking. I stare at them hypnotised by the symphony of colours. Now and then the voice crackles something in my ear.

Time passes. I cannot tell the hours from the days. I go to sleep from time to time and whenever I am hungry, I reach out to the food and drink as I am trained. How many times this happens, I cannot tell. Fear no longer dominates, but soon I begin to feel that loneliness has enveloped my mind. I want to, at least, speak to the voice, my sole companion. But I cannot seem to form the words that it can understand because whenever I call out to it, it does not respond. Instead it emerges from the silence at its own time and then disappears back into the same silence leaving me calling out to it. It is unfriendly, but the only companion I have. More time passes. I fall into a deep sleep.

Suddenly I am woken from my slumber. The whole console is lit up. It is no longer a soft symphony but a frenzy of lights — red, yellow green, blue. My heart beats in my throat. Is everything okay? Has something gone wrong? Fear returns to my mind. A wave of panic engulfs me. There is a sharp hiss of static so unexpected that I cry out, “Ee-ee!”

It’s the voice again, “Approaching the atmosphere of Mars. Descent initialised.”

The weightlessness has disappeared and I begin to feel deceleration and heaviness in my body.

“Guiding capsule to landing point.”

More time passes. I am still confused but somewhat relaxed as the lights also calm down and the feeling in my body returns to normal.

“Impact! We have impact!” shouts the voice. Some familiar lights turn on. I understand this is my signal to don the space helmet which I immediately do as I have been trained several times.

“You can step out of the capsule.” I know what to do. We have rehearsed this over and over again, working tirelessly into the nights. I press the red blinking button. Steam is released and the capsule door opens. I jump out and land my feet on the sand of the Red Planet. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Then joy overcomes me. I have done it! I have accomplished what no man has done before. It is a victory for my kind, for my race! Have I not proven that we are superior to men? They knew that they could not handle the fear and the loneliness. So they sent me — a chimpanzee.

We are not fearless warriors but courageous animals who fight their fears. I am the first of my kind to have beaten man and stretched the boundaries of space flight — and journeyed to a place where no man has gone before.