The same is true of the first animals in space. That doesn’t diminish their profound contribution to scientific knowledge-indeed, it enlarges it. Those soldiers hardly volunteered for the misison: The thousands of monkeys and mice that were used as test subjects for Jonas Salk’s first polio vaccine were conscripted for the job, whether they wanted to do it or not. The mission ended up providing scientists with the first data on the behavior of a living organism orbiting in the space environment.Animals were every bit as heroic as the first human astronautsĪnimals have long been the science community’s shock troops-the first to hit the beaches when a new frontier of knowledge is being claimed. Eventually, without its passenger, Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five months. Some say that the temperature inside the spacecraft after the fourth orbit registered over 90 degrees and there was no expectation that she made it beyond that. She died “soon after launch,” Russian medical doctor and space dog trainer Oleg Gazenko revealed in 1993, the magazine reported. They said that the heat shield made the temperature in the capsule rise, taking its toll on Laika. The magazine said that Laika reached the orbit alive and circled the Earth in about 103 minutes. Smithsonian Magazine said that the noises and pressures of the flight had terrified Laika, making her heart rate increasing to triple in the morning, and her breath rate quadrupled. Because of the thermal problems she probably only survived a day or two,” it said. “There was no capability of returning a payload safely to Earth at this time, so it was planned that Laika would run out of oxygen after about 10 days of orbiting the Earth. What was Sputnik 2 and what happened during the mission? Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth. They chose females because of the relative ease of controlling waste,” NASA’s research revealed.īefore Laika, there were 36 dogs the Soviets sent into space. A test with two dogs would allow for more accurate results. Dogs were chosen over monkeys because it was felt that they would be less fidgety in flight. Eventually they chose small dogs for this phase of testing. “They needed to gather data to design a cabin to carry a human being into space. Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev, along with his team, used research from the American Biomedical research to experiment on mice, rats, and rabbits as one-way passengers. The United States launched rhesus monkeys, mice, fruit flies, and rats during the second world war, with the Soviets keeping close tabs on what the rival was doing with their V-2 and Aerobee missile projects (which sent rhesus monkeys). However, the dogs before Laika were used only during sub-orbital launches. “The contenders also had to be female (easier to rig up) and brightly colored (so video footage of them would be clearer),” NASA reported.ĭespite Laika’s fame, she also was not the first dog in space, as the Soviet Union had launched two dogs named Dezik and Tsygan in 1951 before that. Soviet rocket scientists wanted to send dogs to space to understand microgravity and other aspects of what spaceflight might do to a human body. According to US space agency NASA, “American and Russian scientists utilised animals - mainly monkeys, chimps, and dogs - in order to test each country’s ability to launch a living organism into space and bring it back alive and unharmed.” Before humans actually went to space, one of the theories was that humans might not be able to survive long periods of weightlessness. It was not just the Soviet Union that experimented with animals. The mission wanted female dogs as they were considered anatomically better suited for close confinement.īut why did the Soviet Union want to send animals to space? According to a report by Associated Press, the dog was promoted to cosmonaut (a term referring to an astronaut in the Soviet or Russian space program) based on her ‘small’ size and ‘calm’ demeanor.
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