![]() On April 11, 2008, Russian officials opened a monument to Laika. Over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2 burned up-along with Laika's remains-during re-entry on April 14, 1958. We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. It was not until 1998, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Oleg Gazenko, one of the top-level scientists responsible for sending Laika into space, said he was sorry for allowing her to die: In the Soviet Union, during the following years, no one openly questioned the decision to send a dog into space. Another untruth, as the Soviet government first said, was that she was euthanised (put to sleep) before her oxygen ran out. Instead, it was reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six. The true cause and time of her death were hidden from people until 2002. The heat in her spacecraft had quickly risen to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Her body temperature got way too hot for her to survive. Laika died within hours from overheating. One of the technicians getting the capsule ready before final lift-off said that "after placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch, we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight." Death in space Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote: "Laika was quiet and charming.I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live." “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.Before her trip in Sputnik, one of the scientists took Laika home to play with his children. 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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