Alex McColgan

All eyes were on them, and the stakes were super high.

Half a world away, Edward Mukuka Nkoloso was watching too.

A passionate science school teacher, he dreamed of one day creating his own Zambian space program to rival those of the Americans and Soviets.

The only problem, his country was facing its own political struggle, the struggle for independence.

Zambia, then called Northern Rhodesia, had been under British colonial rule since 1888,

Through the 1950s, Zambians grew increasingly disillusioned with colonialist policies such as racial discrimination and limited political representation for Africans.

Nkoloso was one of these Africans.

After fighting in World War II on behalf of Britain, he opened a school for Zambians which was promptly shut down by the British authorities.

This pushed him to join the Zambian Resistance Movement and later the United National Independence Party.

and Colosso also worked hard for both causes close to his heart.

While one hand was fighting for Zambian independence, the other was building the Zambian National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, which opened in 1960.

The details of what went down at his academy are murky, but it seems this is where Uncoloso's idea for a Zambian space mission emerged.

He was going to send Zambian astronauts, or Afronauts as he called them, to the moon and then to Mars.

And he was going to do it before the US or the Soviet Union.

We have been studying the planet through telescopes at our headquarters and are now certain Mars is populated by primitive natives, he says.

Specially trained space girl Marta Mwambwa, two cats, also specially trained, and a missionary will be launched in our first rocket.

But I have warned the missionary he must not force Christianity on the people of Mars if they do not want it.

If you're wondering about the cats, they were thrown in partly for companionship for Marta, partly as a survival testing device.

Marta was to throw one out onto the Martian surface on arrival, and if it survived, she'd know it was safe for her to emerge too.

In 1964, Nkoloso announced his mission was ready.