Laika at 60: What happens to all the dogs, monkeys and mice sent into space?

Stray dog sent into space in 1957 was first living creature to orbit Earth

Tom Batchelor 

​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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