Laika
- This article is about Laika the dog. For the English indie pop-rock group, see Laika (band); for the song by Moxy Früvous, see the album Bargainville.
Kudryavka (Russian for "Little Curly"), later renamed Laika (died November 3, 1957) was a female part-Samoyed terrier who was launched into orbit in Sputnik 2, on November 3 1957 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. She was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow. She was the first living passenger to orbit Earth. (Both the Soviet Union and the United States had previously sent animals on suborbital spaceflights.) Her name means "barker" in the Russian language. She weighed approximately 6 kg.
Sputnik 2 was not designed to be retrievable, and it was destroyed on reentry on April 14 1958 after 2,570 orbits.
It had been planned that Laika would be euthanized with a poisoned serving of food. In 1999, several Russian sources said that she died after four days when the cabin overheated. In October 2002, it was revealed by Russian sources that Laika died a few hours after launch, from overheating and stress.
Sensors placed on Laika showed that during launch her pulse rate rose to three times its resting level. After reaching weightlessness, her pulse rate decreased, but it took three times longer than it had during earlier ground tests, an indication of stress. Approximately five to seven hours into the flight, no further life signs were received from the spacecraft.
Three dogs were trained for the Sputnik II flight: Albina, Laika and Mushka. Albina flew twice on a high-altitude test rocket while Mushka was used to test instrumentation and life support. To adapt the dogs to the confines of the tiny cabin of Sputnik 2, they were kept in progressively smaller cages for periods up to 20 days.
External links
- NSSDC Master Catalog: Sputnik 2
- David Whitehouse, First dog in space died within hours, BBC News Online, Oct. 28, 2002
- Anatoly Zak, The True Story of Laika the Dog, www.space.com, Nov. 3, 1999