


Laika is thought to have survived for only two days, rather than the ten she was supposed to have.

Despite this, there was no plan to return her to earth, and only a short time after she was in orbit. Is a dog in space? Laika was officially launched into space and traveled around Earth. It was determined that Laika died as a result of overheating or suffocation. It was the first time a living creature was shot into space and taken to orbit the Earth. On July 1, 1957, the Soviet Union sent a dog named Laika into space aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. The First Living Creature In Space: Laika The Dog political history, incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson loses to Barry Goldwater. In one of the most crushing electoral defeats in U.S. Truman in a front-page headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Jesse “The Body” Ventura wins 37 percent of the vote. On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune incorrectly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of the presidential race against incumbent Harry S. More than a dozen Russian dogs were launched into space in preparation for the first manned Soviet space mission, which is set to launch in July. On April 12, 1961, a Soviet cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin became the first person to set foot in space. Laika was a stray on Moscow’s streets before being chosen for the Soviet space program as a stray Siberian husky.īefore becoming a part of the Soviet space program, Laika, a Siberian Husky, lived as a stray on the streets of Moscow.

Laika, the Soviet Union’s first dog-in-space, is onboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft when it launches its first animal into space. Laika, a stray dog from Moscow, served as the crew of Sputnik 2, which was launched into low orbit on November 3, 1957. During a suborbital mission in 1963, the spacefaring cat performed a 15-minute stunt.Īs a Soviet space dog, he was one of the first animals to travel into space and the first to orbit the Earth. The International Space University in Strasbourg, France, has erected a bronze statue of Félicette, the cat who has ever survived a space journey, as a tribute to her extraterrestrial adventure. Laika died of overheating and panic shortly after takeoff, barely five to seven hours after the liftoff. In 2002, Russian scientist Dimitri Malashenkov revealed that she had died in a false sense. Between this period and 2000, the Soviet Union used at least 57 dogs as passenger slots for flights. She paved the way for future missions that would carry humans into the final frontier.ĭuring the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether or not human spaceflight was feasible. Despite the tragic end to Laika’s mission, her flight was a milestone in the history of space exploration. The spacecraft began to experience technical problems soon after launch, and Laika died within hours from stress and overheating. So why did the Soviets send a dog into space? One reason was that dogs were more similar to humans than other animals, so they were thought to be better test subjects for the effects of spaceflight. And in 1949, fruit flies became the first insects to make the journey. In 1948, a monkey named Albert II became the first primate to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Laika was not the first living creature to be sent into space, however. On board Sputnik 2 was a dog named Laika, who became the first animal to orbit the Earth. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, the second artificial satellite to be sent into space.
