In 2015, Russia unveiled a new memorial statue of Laika atop a rocket at a Moscow military research facility, and when the nation honored fallen cosmonauts in 1997 with a statue at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Star City, Moscow, Laika’s image could be seen in one corner. During the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity mission in March 2005, NASA unofficially named a spot within a Martian crater “Laika.”
Space dog biographer Amy Nelson compares Laika to other animal celebrities like the Barnum and Bailey Circus’s late 19th-century elephant Jumbo and champion thoroughbred racehorse Seabiscuit, who lifted American spirits during the Great Depression. She argues in Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans and the Study of History that the Soviet Union transformed Laika into “an enduring symbol of sacrifice and human achievement.”
Soon after the flight, the Soviet mint created an enamel pin to celebrate “The First Passenger in Space.” Soviet allies, such as Romania, Albania, Poland and North Korea, issued Laika stamps over the years between 1957 and 1987.
Laika was not the first space dog: Some had soared in the Soviet military’s sub-orbital rocket tests of updated German V-2 rockets after World War II, and they had returned to Earth via parachuted craft—alive or dead. She also would not be the last dog to take flight. Others returned from orbit alive. After the successful 1960 joint flight of Strelka and Belka, Strelka later produced puppies, and Khrushchev gave one to President John F. Kennedy.
During the days before manned flight, the United States primarily looked to members of the ape family as test subjects. The reason for the Soviet choice of dogs over apes is unclear except perhaps that Ivan Pavlov’s pioneering work on dog physiology in the late 19th and early 20th century may have provided a strong background for the use of canines, Lewis says. Also, stray dogs were plentiful in the streets of the Soviet Union—easy to find and unlikely to be missed.
According to Animals In Space by Colin Burgess and Chris Dubbs, the Soviet Union launched dogs into flight 71 times between 1951 and 1966, with 17 deaths. The Russian space program continues to use animals in space tests, but in every case except Laika’s, there has been some hope that the animal would survive.
Credit : Smithsonian
Picture Credit : Google
