The First Dog in Space

Fact Sheet

The First Dog In Space

The First Cosmonaut The first living creature to orbit the earth from space was not a human being. This journey was instead made by a stray dog from the streets of Moscow named Laika. Laika orbited the earth in a spacecraft named Sputnik 2 which launched into outer space on 3rd November 1957 – that’s almost 12 years before Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

The Space Race In the 1950s, two countries were locked into a competition we now call the Space Race. The United States and the Soviet Union each wanted to be the first to explore deeper into space. The Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race when it became the first country to launch an artificial satellite into space on 4th October 1957.

The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was keen to build on this early advantage. He ordered his scientists to build a ‘space spectacular’ which would stun the world. Khrushchev also wanted this next flight to launch on the 7th November 1957, the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution.

To create a ‘space spectacular’, the Russian scientists decided to launch a dog into orbit. Early flights had sent twelve dogs on suborbital flights and the scientists had been building towards sending a dog into space for some time during 1958. This new launch date would give them less than four weeks to design, build and launch their new spacecraft. Whatever they made would be a rushed job and they knew that they would not be able to return the dog safely to Earth.

Laika The scientists believed that a stray dog would be the ideal animal to test out the flight before allowing a human into a spacecraft. A stray dog growing up on the streets of Moscow would be familiar with the cold and hunger it would experience in space. Three dogs were found: Laika, Albina and Mushka. Laika was a part-husky mongrel who was around three years old and weighed 6kg. Vladimir Yazdovsky – who was in charge of the training of the dogs – described her as being “quiet and charming” and she soon earnt several nicknames from the Soviet workers, including Little Curly, Little Lemon and Little Bug.

Training Training for the dogs was hard. To get them used to the confines of the small spacecraft, the scientists placed them in cages which got smaller and smaller over the weeks. This made them very unhappy and restless.

The dogs were also placed in centrifuges. When a spacecraft launches into space, the astronaut encounters huge pressure caused by the acceleration of the craft as it blasts into space at extreme speeds. To prepare the dogs for this, the centrifuges spun them around very quickly to simulate the acceleration of a rocket launch. To get them used to the sound of the launch, the dogs were also placed into machines that mimicked the loud noise.

In space, the dogs would need to eat a special high-nutrition gel instead of proper food, so they needed to be trained to get used to this.

Vladimir Yazdovsky chose Laika to journey aboard Sputnik 2 with Albina as her reserve. The third dog, Mushka, would test instruments on the ground. Shortly before the launch, one of the scientists took Laika home to play with their children. He knew the dog did not have long to live and wanted to do something nice for her.

The Flight The dogs travelled to Turatam, where the launch was to take place by plane. Three days before the launch, they were placed into capsules to get used to the feeding systems. Turatam in late October was very cold and a heater was connected to the capsules to keep the dogs warm. Before closing the hatch door, one of the technicians kissed Laika’s nose and wished her luck.

It is uncertain what time Laika’s capsule took off, with some reports giving 5:30am or 7:22am. The instruments showed that Laika was very stressed. There had been some difficulty in separating parts of the rocket and, during this, some of the insulation had come loose, making the capsule temperature hotter than planned. It was only after three hours of weightlessness when Laika’s pulse rate was shown to settle down. However, Laika was still managing to eat her food.

After five to seven hours, there were no further life signs being recorded from Laika. Her cabin had overheated after its fourth orbit.

On April 14th 1958, over five months after its launch and after more than 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2 returned to Earth, disintergrating during re-entry.

Laika’s legacy Following Laika’s journey into space there was a lot of debate about whether or not it was right to send animals into space in the place of humans. There were many protests and demonstrations around the world.

Any future space missions involving dogs were designed so that the animals could be returned to Earth safely.

A statue of Laika was created in 1997 and placed outside the Russian cosmonaut training facility. A further monument was unveiled in 2008 outside the research facility where she was trained.