History
Not much is known about laika before the soviet space program. She's a
mixed breed dog that was found on the streets of Moscow and estimated to
be about 2 years old and a mix of terrier and husky (altough I know
nothing about dog breeds) She died aboard sputnik 2 a few hours after
flight, on november 3rd 1957, during the fourth orbit around earth, making
her the first living being (besides microorganisms) to orbit earth, and another victim of attempts to
progress science without regard for life.
It's interesting to think that one of the lead scientists working with
Laika even took her home to play with his kids and before the flight
multiple people kissed her nose and wished her a good flight, some
people even cried as they knew she would not come back. She was given
multiple nicknames, including Laika (barker). The soviets opted for dogs
rather than monkeys, which the US ended up sending, since dogs didn't
have the risk of damaging any equipment. By the summer of 51 there were 8
dogs in the program that fit the criteria that they were looking for (females, short
hair, street dogs) they were: Albina, Bobik, Laika, Desik, Lisa,
Malyshka, Tsygan (pretty sure this one is a slur) and Smelaya. Note
that laika was called initially Kudryavka (curly) but then changed to
Laika (barker) which is a common dog name, since she barked a lot[citation needed]. She
was algo called zhucka (little bug) and Limonchik (lemon?????) by the
soviets and gained the names Muttnik, Linda and locky apparently but I
cant find a source on those two last ones. Bobik ended up running away
just before its flight and was replaced with a dog they just found named
ZIB (short for substitute for missing bobik). There were also a bunch of
other dogs that were part of the soviet space program, some of which
were never actually sent to space. On
October 4 1957 they managed to place the first satellite on earths
orbit (sputnik), this is actually one of the greatest feats of humanity and is
severely overlooked. Anyway, for the 40th birthday of the october
revolution the government wanted to commemorate it by sending a rocket
into orbit with a living being, so they only really had a month to
prepare something which the technology and planning just weren't there
yet. The flight ended up happening on november 3rd and while successful,
there wasn't any way for Laika to return to earth so they just waited
for the spaceship to desintegrate as it entered the atmosphere, she died
by overheating due to an error but had enough food for 20 days, altough
they planned she'd live for only a few days. After that, technology was
developed to the point we could send animals to orbital space and
recover them, the first of which were Belka and Strelka.
