Or Animal) Has Ever Gone Before

To Boldy Go Where No Man (or Animal) Has Ever Gone Before

Marina Jones

April 17, 2013

In 1783, a newly invented hot-air balloon, the Aerostat Reveillon rose into the sky. On board were a duck, a rooster, and a sheep, the ﬁrst animal passengers in a man-made ﬂying machine. Ultimately, more animals have traveled into space than humans.

Laika the dog (Source)

Without animals we would know a lot less about space travel. They performed services no human was willing to oﬀer. Many died in ﬂight or upon reentry. Today they are treated with more respect, but this wasnt always the case. In the early days, many animals were sent in

1 rockets with a one way ticket, and with no reentry strategy in place (this was the case with Laika, the Soviet Sputniks canine passenger, and for numerous mice, rats, and rabbits).

There are many questions regarding the ethics of using animals for research. It is possible that a great number of human lives would have been lost if these animals hadnt served as our ﬁrst astronauts and cosmonauts....but we will leave these debates to other interested parties.

The very first space traveler wasnt a dog or a monkey. The first living organisms sent to outer space were fruit flies (some invisible bacteria were probably blasted off unintentionally even earlier than that).

The flies were launched in July 1946, on a V-2 rocket from White Sands, New Mexico, to study the effects of high-altitude radiation on living organisms. The container of fruit flies successfully parachuted back to earth. This encouraged space programs around the world; countries began sending larger animals in sub-orbital and orbital space flights.

Monkey suits

Click to see a larger image (Source) The first primate in space was a rhesus monkey - Albert I. He was launched on June 11, 1948 from White Sands, New Mexico, on a V-2 rocket. Albert didnt survive the flight. After this, all the monkeys from Air Force Aeromedical Laboratory launched on the V-2 rockets from White Sands, were called Albert Albert II, Albert III, and Albert IV. Most of the launches experienced technical difficulties and the monkeys, who survived the flight, were usually killed during reentry when parachutes failed to open.

On September 20, 1951, a monkey named Yorick (together with eleven mice) was launched on the Aerobee rocket from the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. He, and the mice, returned safely.

In 1952 two Philippine monkeys, Patricia and Mike, were placed in seated and prone positions as scientists watched a video camera to see the eﬀects of acceleration, weightlessness, and deceleration 36 miles up. The animals survived the landing and spent the rest of their lives

2 in retirement at the National Zoological Park at Washington D.C.

Gordo, a squirrel monkey, was launched aboard a Jupiter AM-13 booster on a suborbital ﬂight on December 13, 1958. He survived the launch, several minutes of zero gravity, and a 10,000 mile per hour speed back to Earth. He died on splashdown. Sadly, Gordos capsule was never found. He proved that humans could endure launch and weightlessness.

Rhesus monkey suited up for Little Joe launch of Mercury capsule Able (a rhesus monkey) and Baker (a squirrel monkey), launched aboard an Army Jupiter missile (an intermediate-range ballistic missile) in 1959, and they flew to an altitude of 300 miles at speeds of over 10,000 miles per hour. The monkeys were recovered successfully, and Baker spent the rest of his life at the U.S. Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama, and died at age 27 in 1984. Ham, a four-year-old chimpanzee (an acronym of Holloman Aero Med) paved the way for the launch of Americas first human astronaut, Alan B. Shepard on May 5, 1961. Ham was launched into suborbital flight aboard the Mercury Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 31, 1961. Hams rocket overshot and boosted him to a speed of 5,857 miles per hour (1,457 mph faster than planned) and to an altitude of 157 miles (instead of 115). During his 16.5 minute flight, Ham experienced 6.6 minutes of weightlessness and performed his tasks perfectly. He was retrieved successfully despite splashing down 60 miles away from the recovery ship. After the flight, he spent more than a decade at the Washington Zoo. His remains are buried in front of the International Space

3 Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Enos was the ﬁrst chimpanzee to orbit the earth; He circled the planet twice and returned safely. His mission prepared the way for a human orbital ﬂight by John Glenn on February 20, 1962.

The USSR also favored monkeys for space research. It ran tests on monkeys near the Black Sea at the Sochi Institute of Medical Primatology, the training facility for the ﬁrst Soviet monkeys launched into space in 1983.

A brek and Bion took a ﬁve-day trip around Earth. Two years later, Verny and Gordy spent seven days in space, and in 1987, Dryoma and Yerosha (pictured right) spent 14 days in space. As a gesture of friendship, Dryoma was given to Cuban leader Fidel Castro as a gift. The Sochi facility carried out three more ﬂights until the project ran out of money. Now, the Russians are talking about a possible primate mission to Mars to measure the physical impact of a long trip in space on mammalian bodies.

After the failed eﬀort to launch a live rhesus monkey into space in 2011, the Iranian space

4 program succeeded in sending a live monkey aboard the space capsule Pishgam (pioneer in Farsi). The monkey went into suborbital ﬂight on January 28, 2013 and returned to earth alive and well.

The Dogs Days:

The most famous and beloved of all space animals was Laika, a 13-pound female mongrel, who became the ﬁrst mammal to go into orbit around the Earth. She had more nicknames than any other space dog. Originally named Kudryavka (Little Curly in Russian), her oﬃcial name was Laika (Barker). The American press dubbed her Muttnik (a play on the words Sputnik and mutt). Despite Laikas world fame, her story ends sadly. Nikita Khruschev (head of the Soviet communist party) put pressure on Sergey Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program, to launch Sputnik 2 with a dog. Many believe that Sputnik 2 was poorly designed, because the work was rushed. Laika was picked up from the streets and hastily trained. She was launched aboard Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957.

Laika wasnt coming back. She was provided with 10 days worth of oxygen and her last meal on the flight was poisoned to prevent a slow death from starvation. Laika actually died within hours of takeoff. Officials told the public that she had survived in orbit for four days before dying from the heat. In 1998, Oleg Gazenko, a Russian scientist involved in the

5 project, declared, The more time passes, the more Im sorry about it. We didnt learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog

There were multiple dogs involved in suborbital and orbital space flights in the Soviet Union. All the dogs chosen were stray females. Strays were preferred because the doctors believed that if they were tough enough to survive the harsh Russian winters and life in the streets, they would be able to quickly adapt to extreme conditions encountered in space. Females were chosen because of the design of the special suits for collecting urine and feces. The dogs had to be rather small, about 14 inches in height and no more than 13 pounds. They had to fit into small cockpits, and as part of their training, the dogs were confined in small boxes for 10-20 days at a time. The training included wearing pressure suits with acrylic glass bubble helmets and spinning in centrifuges that stimulated the high acceleration of a rocket during launch. Most dogs survived the ordeal. Some flew into space twice and some are remembered by name.

Dezik and Tsygan were the first dogs to make a suborbital flight on July 22, 1951. Dezik made another suborbital trip later that year with Lisa, but neither dog survived. Tsygan was adopted as a pet by Soviet physicist Anatoly Blagonravov. More suborbital flights followed

6 with Smelaya and Malyshka, Bolik and ZIB, Otvazhnaya and Snezhinka, and many others.

Strelka and Belka On August 19, 1960, the most famous pair, Belka and Strelka, spent a day in space on Korabl-Sputnik-2. They were accompanied by a grey rabbit, 2 rats, 42 mice, several plants, and fungi. All the animals survived. Their successful flight gave the Soviets the confidence to send a human into space within a year. Belka (Squirrel in Russian) and Strelka (Arrow) were instant celebrities. Their flight was broadcast on television, and captivated audiences watched the dogs doing somersaults in zero gravity. They toured the country visiting kinder- gartens, schools, and orphanages. Strelka gave birth twice to a litter of puppies. One of the

7 puppies was named Pushinka (Fluﬀy) and was later sent as a gift to President John F. Kennedy by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Belka and Strelka spent the rest of their lives at the Institute where they were trained, and died of old age.

On March 9, 1961, Chernushka was launched aboard Sputnik 9, accompanied by a dummy cosmonaut, a guinea pig, and some mice. Zvezdochka was launched on board Sputnik 10 with a simulated cosmonaut (a wooden mannequin) nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich (John Doe). They came back safely just 18 days before Yury Gagarins famous ﬁrst ﬂight around the earth on April 12, 1961.

Cool Cats:

This totally happened On October 18, 1963, a black and white stray tomcat Felix (or his female double Felicette, ac- cording to some reports) was launched into space by the French space program on Veronique AGI rocket No.47. The ﬁrst cat in space descended by parachute after the capsule in the rockets nose cone separated at 120 miles high. The second cat ﬂight in 1963 wasnt as successful and the cat was never recovered.

Spiders ﬂy:

8 On July 28, 1973, on the last Apollo ﬂight, NASAs Skylab 3 carried two common Cross orb weaving spiders Anita and Arabella. The spiders were monitored for 59.5 days to see if they could weave the traditional orb web in a near-zero-gravity environment. The spiders were successful and they are on exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Golden Orb Spider in Orbit In 2011, two golden orb spiders, Gladys and Esmeralda, were launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavor to the international Space Station. They were observed by astronauts for behavior in microgravity. Orb webs are logarithmic spirals of silk threads that are small in the center and larger at the outer area. Spiders use the sense of their own weight to determine how much silk is needed to spin the web correctly. Gravity plays an important role in how much silk they decide to use, so the observations of spiders in microgravity gave scientists an idea about the spiders weight sensing ability.

Other animal payload on space ﬂights included rabbits, bullfrogs, turtles, ﬁsh, amoeba, worms, insects and numerous other species. It helped scientists understand better the bio- logical changes that occur during microgravity exposure.

Regulations for animal research, says Laura Lewis, a member of NASA Ames Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, are more intense than for using people in research because people can give consent. Animals cant object, so people need to work on their behalf. Truth is, animals work on our behalf. Maybe thats why we talk about wormholes.