Laika Orbits Earth: First Animal in Space

A stray dog pulled from the streets of Moscow became the first living creature to orbit Earth on November 3, 1957, sealed inside a capsule roughly the size of a washing machine. Laika, a small mixed-breed terrier chosen for her calm temperament and tolerance of confinement, launched aboard Sputnik 2 just one month after the first Sputnik satellite had stunned the world. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wanted a dramatic follow-up for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the engineers had four weeks to deliver. The compressed timeline meant there was no possibility of building a reentry system. Laika's mission was designed from the start to be one-way. Soviet scientists knew the dog would die in orbit, though publicly they maintained for decades that she had been painlessly euthanized. The truth, revealed in 2002 by scientist Dimitri Malashenkov, was far grimmer: Laika died within five to seven hours of launch from overheating caused by a thermal control failure. The spacecraft carried instruments to measure Laika's pulse, respiration, and blood pressure, transmitting data back to Earth. Her heart rate spiked to triple its resting rate during launch, then gradually returned toward normal in weightlessness. The biomedical data from those few hours was invaluable. Before Laika's flight, many scientists genuinely believed a living organism might not survive the transition to weightlessness or the stresses of orbital velocity. The mission provoked one of the first major international protests against animal cruelty in scientific research. The British National Canine Defence League called on dog owners worldwide to observe a minute of silence. The ethical controversy complicated Soviet propaganda efforts and influenced later decisions to design recoverable capsules. Laika's sacrifice directly informed the missions that carried Yuri Gagarin into orbit less than four years later. A monument to her was unveiled in Moscow in 2008.