Stray dog sent into space in 1957
was first living creature to orbit Earth
Laika’s last moments on
earth were spent strapped into a windowless Soviet rocket awaiting lift off.
The stray dog had enjoyed a
meteoric rise to fame in 1957, having been plucked from a Moscow street,
hastily trained and blasted into space.
That ill-fated mission resulted
in Laika overheating and dying five hours into the flight.
But Sputnik 2’s launch – 60 years
ago, today – was a defining moment in the history of space exploration; only
the second time a spacecraft had been launched into Earth’s orbit, and the
first time a living creature had been on board.
While Laika may have been a
trailblazer in orbiting the Earth, animals were being employed in the name
of space
exploration more than a decade earlier.
Russian and American scientists
have long used animals to test the limits of their ability to send living
organisms into space – and return them unharmed.
The first sent into outer space
were fruit flies blasted to an altitude of 68 miles inside a re-fashioned Nazi
V2 rocket in 1947.
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