Laika, first dog in space, honored five decades later

Posted on Apr 14, 2008 By Julia Szabo
As reported by Associated Press, last Friday Russian officials unveiled a monument to the space pioneer who made the ultimate sacrifice in paving the way for human exploration of the cosmos. Laika, a 2-year-old female mongrel, was the first living creature to go into orbit, an experiment to see how a complex organism would react to spaceflight. The Soviet space program used exclusively small, stray mutts picked up on the streets of Moscow.

The monument is located near a military research facility in Moscow where Laika was prepared for her historic flight. Sputnik 2 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Nov. 3, 1957, less than one month after the launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial space satellite.  

Nicknamed "Muttnik" by the American press, Laika was harnessed into the capsule with no room to move and tethered to a life-support system, her vital signs monitored by electrodes. The capsule was rigged with food and water, but it was not designed for recovery. The eyes of the world were on this launch, and with Cold War pressure mounting there wasn't enough time to design a re-entry vehicle. The little dog was doomed.  

Technical problems just prior to launch meant that Laika waited three days in the capsule. "Laika was quiet and charming," said cosmonaut Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky. Before taking her to the launch pad, Yazdovsky took Laika home to play with his children. "I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left to live," he recalled.  

When the capsule reached orbit, doctors discovered that the dog's heartbeat and blood pressure were normal. The plan was to euthanize her with a programmed injection, but Laika died of overheating and asphyxiation. Sputnik 2 re-entered the atmosphere in April 1958; the capsule and its passenger were incinerated.  

In 1998, Oleg Gazenko, the scientist who selected and trained Laika, said at a Moscow news conference, "Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it. We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."  

Sadly, more dogs would die in failed launches until August 1960, when two more female mutts, Strelka and Belka, orbited Earth eighteen times aboard Sputnik 5 and returned safely to Earth. After sending more dogs into space, the Soviet Union put cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the world's first human, into space on April 12, 1961.