Who was Laika the space dog?
Laika was a black-and-white mutt originally named Kudrayavka, or Little Curly. Her later name, which means Barker, came about when she barked during a radio interview. (In the U.S. press, she was sometimes called Muttnik.) Laika weighed about 13 pounds (6 kilograms) at the time of her flight, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
Laikas launch pad to fame were the streets of Moscow. Soviet rocket scientists wanted to send dogs to space to better understand what launch, microgravity and other aspects of spaceflight might do to a human body. So they collected stray dogs, who they thought would be suitable scrappy. The contenders also had to be female (easier to rig up) and brightly colored (so video footage of them would be clearer).
From these, the rocket engineers selected the most obedient and those most tolerant of loud noises and air pressure changes. The researchers also subjected final candidates to test runs in small capsules — some lasting for weeks, according to Smithsonian Magazine (opens in new tab).
Laikas back-up was named Albina (White); rumors suggest that the Russian spaceflight engineers made Laika their first choice because they were more attached to Albina, who had recently had puppies.
A visitor’s guide to the International Space Station
But to gather the necessary information to design a cabin fit for a human astronaut, they also turned to stray dogs.
On 15 August 1951, Dezik and Tsygan were launched, becoming the first canine suborbital astronauts.
Several more embarked on similar, suborbital flights until stray mongrel Laika – dubbed Muttnik – was picked up from the street and trained for her Earth-orbiting mission.
“It harks back to a time when people knew very little about the space,” Martin Barstow, director of the Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation, said of Laika’s mission.
He told The Independent: “They didn’t know if people could survive in space. It was very much a pathfinder.
“It was a precursor to Yuri Gagarin’s flight [in 1961]. They were testing their capsule technology, testing the oxygen supply, whether or not radiation might have harmed it and whether it could have survived the mission.”
Adilya Kotovskaya, a 90-year-old Russian biologist who helped train Laika, speaking on the 60th anniversary, said: “Those nine orbits of Earth made Laika the world’s first cosmonaut – sacrificed for the sake of the success of future space missions.”
“We chose bitches because they don’t have to raise a leg to urinate which means they need less space than the males,” she told the AFP news agency.
“And [we chose] strays because they are more resourceful and less demanding.”
The first animals to reach outer space and return alive were a pair of dogs – Belka and Strelka – who blasted off on 19 August 1960, returning a day later.International Space Station flies in front of solar eclipse
In 1968 the Soviet Union sent a spacecraft to orbit the moon carrying two tortoises, wine flies and mealworms.
Frogs, cats and spiders have followed. But once humans landed on the moon in 1969, the role of animals began to fade.
Attention – and controversy – has only recently returned to the use of animals in 21st century space exploration and in particular, the bid to send humans to Mars.
A major risk to astronauts attempting to reach the red planet is the high level of radiation, so US, European and Russian space agencies have considered testing the effect on monkeys before sending humans to Mars.
Boris Lapin, director of the Sochi Institute of Medical Primatology, said monkeys and humans “have approximately identical sensitivity to small and large radiation doses”.
“It is better to experiment on the macaques, but not on dogs or other animals,” he said.
Professor Barstow said there was “no chance” that dogs would be tested on in future space missions.
The largest creatures in the International Space Station’s laboratory are likely to be small insects, he said.
“We’re a bit more alert to the nuances of whether or not you should test anything on animals these days.
“And putting animals in space is not a lot different to testing cosmetics on them. When and if you do it, it has to be under controlled circumstances. It is a different era now.
“We know a lot about radiation and how it affects humans and animals. The issue of radiation for a trip to Mars is more about understanding what the doses will be, and testing protection systems and I don’t see why you would need to use animals to test and verify that. We are much more sophisticated in the ways we measure and test that now.”From left to right: Ham, the first chimpanzee in space; a Russian dog is prepared for lift off (Alamy)
The Caenorhabditis elegans worm is the latest animal set to reach space, chosen because it has similar nerve, muscle and digestive systems to humans.
The worms will reach the International Space Station in just over a year as part of the Molecular Muscle experiment.
Libby Jackson, human spaceflight and microgravity programme manager at the UK Space Agency, told The Independent the experiment “will look at how these worms age in space and how their muscles are affected by weightlessness”.
“This could help scientists understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for muscle-wasting conditions, such as muscular dystrophy, which could improve the lives of people on Earth,” she added.
Dr Julia Baines, science policy adviser at animal rights group Peta, said: “Animals aren’t astronauts and, unlike human volunteers, can’t give their consent to being the subjects of experiments or to risking their lives on a frightening mission into the unknown.
“Laika, the first animal to be launched into orbit, died from overheating and panic in the tiny spacecraft – all alone and in severe pain.”
In 2010, under mounting pressure from animal rights campaigners, Nasa announced it was shelving a plan to conduct radiation experiments on squirrel monkeys.
The European Space Agency also ruled out further primate tests, saying it did not see “any need or use” for them.
But reports suggest Russia is also moving ahead with plans for primate experimentation.
Nasa argues that without testing in the early days of space exploration, Soviet and American programmes “could have suffered great losses of human life”.
“These animals performed a service to their respective countries that no human could or would have performed,” the agency said.
“They gave their lives and their service in the name of technological advancement, paving the way for humanity’s many forays into space.”
Laika’s mission: Sputnik 2
Sputnik 1, which launched on Oct. 4, 1957, was a 184-lb. (83 kilograms), beach-ball-size sphere that basically just emitted beeps as it circled Earth, although those beeps shocked the world.
Sputnik 2 launched just a month later; according to one account (opens in new tab) of an interview with cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, who flew in the 1970s, the project was rushed to coincide with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution that eventually led to the Soviet Union.
The spacecraft was much larger and more elaborate than its predecessor. The spacecraft was 13 feet (4 meters) tall and 6.5 feet (2 m) at its widest, and it weighed 1,120 lbs. (508 kg), according to NASA (opens in new tab). The spacecraft carried scientific instruments to measure solar radiation and cosmic rays, as well as a cabin for Laika that was equipped with a video camera.
Laika could sit or lie down in the cabin, which was equipped with an air regeneration system and padding. Laika, decked out in a harness, a crude sanitation device and a set of electrodes, had access to food and water “in a gelatinized form,” according to NASA (opens in new tab). “The early telemetry indicated Laika was agitated but eating her food.”
Sputnik 2 was a suicide mission for the poor dog; the satellite was not designed to come safely back to Earth and the Soviet space program didnt want to delay the launch.
Telemetry data showed that Laika survived the launch, according to Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Initially, Soviet publications claimed that the dog died, painlessly, after a week in Earth orbit. But that account has been called into question over the years.
“Decades later, several Russian sources revealed that Laika survived in orbit for four days and then died when the cabin overheated,” Zak wrote (opens in new tab). “According to other sources, severe overheating and the death of the dog occurred only five or six hours into the mission.”
According to NASA (opens in new tab), the spacecraft may have overheated because the thermal control system didnt work properly and some insulation tore off due to an anomaly during the launch.
Sputnik 2s batteries died on Nov. 10, 1957, and the spacecraft stopped beaming data home.
“With all systems dead, the spacecraft continued circling the Earth until April 14, 1958, when it re-entered the atmosphere after 2,570 orbits (2,370 orbits according to other sources) or 162 days in space,” Zak wrote. “Many people reportedly saw a fiery trail of Sputnik 2 as it flew over New York and reached the Amazon region in just 10 minutes during its re-entry.”
What Happened to Laika in Space? *The Space Dog*
On 31 August 1950, the U.S. launched a mouse into space (137 km) aboard a V-2 (the Albert V flight, which, unlike the Albert I-IV flights, did not have a monkey), but the rocket disintegrated because the parachute system failed. … Both space dogs survived the flight, although one would die on a subsequent flight.