Laika: The Space Dog

Shortly after the launch of Sputnik, the US public was stunned by another Soviet launch less than a month later. This particular satellite was sent to orbit around the earth while also containing the first living organism, a dog named Laika. While Laika's voyage showed that an organism could survive the weightlessness and the initial launch, as she apparently survived for about 4-7 days in space, it turns out that she died within a few hours.

Laika started as a stray on the streets of Moscow before she began he path to fame. She was chosen as a stray with the belief that she would be more prepared to the cold and the little amount of food that she would receive during her voyage. To prepare her, they would send her up in high altitude rockets and confine her to extremely small spaces in order to simulate her journey.

Finally, on November 3rd, 1957, she was launched into space on the Sputnik 2 becoming the first living organism to orbit the planet. This shocked the world but also caused outrage when the public realized that there was no plan to get her down from orbit as that technology hadn't been invented yet. Furthermore, she had to endure terrifying conditions throughout her short-lived flight such as being chained forward and confined to a tiny space.

Soviet engineers and scientists had designed the satellite to try and keep Laika alive as long as possible by using a fan to regulate temperatures, feeding her food, circulating oxygen, and providing a system of waste disposal for her. Despite these measures, most scientists agreed that she would be dead within a week.

The Soviet Union officially reported that she had died on day six due to either an oxygen shortage or a controlled euthanization using food poisoning over time, but these accounts varied for the next 4 decades. Finally, in 2002, a scientist who worked on the mission revealed that she had died within her 4th orbit or less than 5 hours. The stress of being launched shot her heart rate up 3 to 4 fold and she never truly recovered from that. But her main cause of death is considered to be overheating as part of the rocket did not properly separate, affecting the temperature control.

Nowadays, there are multiple monuments to her and her contributions to space travel in Russia and she remains an important part of space history today.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
https://www.space.com/38660-laika-space-dog-launch-60th-anniversary.html