![]() Īccording to Russian sources, the official decision to launch Sputnik 2 was made on October 10 or 12, leaving only four weeks to design and build the spacecraft. To satisfy Khrushchev's demands, they expedited the orbital canine flight for the November launch. Soviet rocket engineers had long intended a canine orbit before attempting human spaceflight since 1951, they had lofted 12 dogs into sub-orbital space on ballistic flights, working gradually toward an orbital mission set for some time in 1958. Planners settled on an orbital flight with a dog. Khrushchev specifically wanted his engineers to deliver a "space spectacular", a mission that would repeat the triumph of Sputnik I, stunning the world with Soviet prowess. Meeting the November deadline meant building a new craft. Construction had already started on a more sophisticated satellite, but it would not be ready until December this satellite would later become Sputnik 3. Sputnik 2 Īfter the success of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wanted a spacecraft launched on November 7, 1957, the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. It features a dog standing on top of a rocket. A small monument in her honour was built near the military research facility in Moscow which prepared Laika's flight to space. On April 11, 2008, Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002 instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six or as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion. Laika died within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure weightlessness, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, therefore Laika's survival was not expected. Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957. 1954 – November 3, 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. ![]() Romanian stamp from 1959 with Laika (the caption reads "Laika, first traveller into Cosmos")
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