First Soviet Space Dog Was A Stray Plucked From The Streets Of Moscow A Week Before Launch

It was 57 years ago this week that a Soviet space dog named Laika became the first-ever living animal to be sent into orbit.

The date was November 3, 1957, and Laika, a small, quiet, calm, and charming dog who had been sleeping rough and living the life of an anonymous hobo on the streets of Moscow a week earlier, was about to become the first ever canine cosmonaut to be launched into orbit, and earn herself a small but very important chapter in the pages of history as the first earthborn creature to reach outer space.

Sadly for Laika, to boldly go where no man, or indeed dog had ever been before, ended in tragedy. Any passenger who boarded the Sputnik 2 was on a guaranteed suicide mission, because at that point in the space race, technology hadn’t advanced enough to guarantee a return trip.

Alone in the cosmos, with nothing but the stars to witness her passing and mourn her demise, Laika likely suffered a painful death. For many a moon, the official story was that Laika expired painlessly after about a week in orbit.

However, Time magazine reported that a source from Moscow’s Institute for Biological Problems told BBC News in 2002 that the poor dog died within hours of take-off from panic and overheating.

In whatever grim and terrible fashion Laika’s space odyssey ended, it matters not to the pages of posterity. As the New York Times reported, “In death she became a global phenomenon, canonized as a symbol of patriotic sacrifice.”

Laika, along with other Soviet space dogs such as Belka and Strelka, who blazed a similar trail three years later, has become a four-legged Russian icon.

As Oleysa Turkin writes in her book Soviet Space Dogs, “These dogs are the characters in a fairy tale that was created in the U.S.S.R. They are the martyrs and saints of communism. These dogs were the pioneers for humankind. Not only for the idea of the single hero, but crucially, for all humanity.”

Unlike Laika, Belka and Strelka spent a day in orbit and lived to brag, or should that be bark about it.

“Following their triumphant landing, they appeared on radio and television, and their portraits were featured in newspapers and magazine.”

Images of all three dogs were once plastered on candy bars, postcards, stamps, pins, and once upon a time you could even smoke a Laika cigarette.

Yet over half a century later, it is Laika’s sacrifice which is remembered the most.

Despite quips at the time in the press about Laika’s mission, including one memorable line from the Chicago American which read, “The Russian sputpup isn’t the first dog in the sky. That honor belongs to the dog star. But we’re getting too Sirius,” the first canine cosmonaut is still remembered with affection and admiration.

Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky, who was one of Laika’s human counterparts in the Soviet space program, remembers her as a good dog. He even brought her home to play with his children before she was launched into orbit.

“Laika was quiet and charming. I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left to live.”