Laika
Laika was a dog who was launched into orbit with Sputnik II, of the Sputnik program, on November 3 1957 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, making her the first living passenger to orbit Earth (she is usually remembered as the first animal in space, but this is not correct; both the Soviet Union and United States had launched animals to space before Sputnik II, but they were not orbital flights.)
Sputnik II was not designed to be retrievable and it was destroyed on re-entry on May 14 1958, but Laika had already died before that; it had been planned that she would be euthanized with a poisoned serving of food; in 1999 several Russian sources said that Laika died after four days when the cabin overheated. In October 2002, it was revealed by Russian sources that Laika was dead after a few hours from overheating and stress.
Sensors placed on Laika showed that during launch her pulse rate rose to three times its resting level. After reaching weightlessness, her pulse rate decreased
but took three times longer then earlier ground tests to do so, an indication of the stress on her.
Three dogs were trained for the Sputnik 2 flight: Albina, Laika and Mushka. Albina flew twice on a high-altitude test rocket while Mushka was used to test instrumentation and life support. To adapt the dogs to the confines of the tiny cabin of Sputnik 2 they were kept in progressivly smaller cages for periods up to 20 days.
External links
- David Whitehouse, First dog in space died within hours, BBC Online, Oct. 28, 2002
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm
- Anatoly Zak, The True Story of Laika the Dog, www.space.com, Nov. 3, 1999
- http://www.space.com/news/laika_anniversary_991103.html
Laika is also the name of an English indie pop-rock group.
"Laika" is also the title of a track from Moxy Früvous's 1993 album, Bargainville.
Referenced By
3 November | 3rd November | Canis Canis | Canis familiaris | Canis lupus familiaris | Crewed space mission | First to | Human spaceflight | List of Firsts | List of historical dogs | Manned space mission | November 3 | November 3rd | Puppy | Space Race | Sputnik | Sputnik 1 | Sputnik 2 | Sputnik I | Sputnik II | Sputnik program | Timeline of artificial satellites and space probes
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