![]() ![]() Once the launch was successful, doctors were able to keep track of her heartbeat and her blood pressure. Operators had to keep her warm by pumping hot air into her cockpit as the temperatures around the launch pad were freezing. She had to wait for three days before launch locked inside the capsule whilst technical problems with the launch were fixed. Unfortunately Laika’s trip was far from humane. ![]() There was intense excitement about her selection for participation in the space race and she endeared herself to scientists and the public she was described as “quiet and charming”. After all, the first Russian into space would need to be photogenic. Two year old Laika was apparently chosen from the animal shelter in Moscow for her good looks. Also, small dogs were chosen as they could fit into the capsule and were light for launch. The dogs chosen for the Russian space program were usually stray mongrels as it was believed they could survive and adapt in harsh conditions. Due to her being so small and hardy, she made it into orbit, but this was a one way ticket, she had no idea there would be no coming home… be warned, this isn’t a happy tale… When she made the historic flight into space on board Sputnik II, very little was known about the effects of launch and zero-gravity on an animal and Laika wasn’t thought to make it. Her little memorial is a model dog standing atop a rocket near a military research facility in Moscow. “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.On Friday Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika, the pioneering dog that led the way to manned spaceflight on November 3rd, 1957. Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote in a book about Soviet space medicine, as quoted by the AP. He even brought her home to play with his children before she began her space odyssey. One of Laika’s human counterparts in the Soviet space program recalled her as a good dog. Sputnik 2 continued to orbit the Earth for five months, then burned up when it reentered the atmosphere in April 1958. Nearly a half-century later, Russian officials found themselves handling PR fallout once again after it was revealed that reports of Laika’s humane death were greatly exaggerated.Īlthough they had long insisted that Laika expired painlessly after about a week in orbit, an official with Moscow’s Institute for Biological Problems leaked the true story in 2002: She died within hours of takeoff from panic and overheating, according to the BBC. When Laika’s vessel, Sputnik 2, shot into orbit, the U.S. Just a month earlier, they had launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. (Other dogs had gone into space before Laika, but only for sub-orbital launches.) The mission was another in a series of coups for the Soviet Union, which was then leading the way in space exploration while the United States lagged. All of the 36 dogs the Soviets sent into space - before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth - were strays, chosen for their scrappiness. ![]() She was promoted to cosmonaut based partly on her size (small) and demeanor (calm), according to the Associated Press. Laika was a stray, picked up from the Moscow streets just over a week before the rocket was set to launch. ![]() The flight was meant to test the safety of space travel for humans, but it was a guaranteed suicide mission for the dog, since technology hadn’t advanced as far as the return trip. 3, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first-ever living animal into orbit: a dog named Laika. It was a Space Race victory that would have broken Sarah McLachlan’s heart. ![]()
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