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55 years ago today, Laika, a mutt picked up as a stray off the streets of Moscow, blasted off aboard Sputnik 2 and became the first living being to orbit the Earth. At the time, no one was really sure it was even possible to survive being launched into space or even just being weightless. Laika proved it was possible, paving the way for human space travel. Due to a malfunction in the capsule separation some of the thermal insulation was torn away preventing the life support systems from being able to sufficiently cool the cabin as temperatures rose to 40 °C (104 °F), so Laika only survived 5 to 7 hours and probably suffered a miserable death from overheating after about 4 orbits. This was kept secret until 2002, originally the Soviets claimed Laika had lived for most a week in orbit.

However, Sputnik 2 was not designed to land, Laika had been doomed to die in space one way or another. There was a plan to euthanize her with a poison food ration before her oxygen ran out, but it never came down to that. The scientists had not wanted to do things this way. Aside from the inhumanity of it, you really can get a lot more data if you bring your test subject back. They had wanted to build a capsule that could make the round trip, but First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev demanded to have a Soviet spacecraft in orbit for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and there was no way to complete the more sophisticated capsule in time, so a simpler design was used that didn't include a way to return to Earth. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was safe for him to say so, one of the scientists said, "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."

No other animals were launched on one-way missions after Laika. At least not intentionally. Two more canine cosmonauts died when their capsule was blown up to prevent it from landing outside of Soviet controlled territory. But from 1960-1966 six other space dogs successfully orbited and returned.

Description
55 years ago today, Laika, a mutt picked up as a stray off the streets of Moscow, blasted off aboard Sputnik 2 and became the first living being to orbit the Earth. At the time, no one was really sure it was even possible to survive being launched into space or even just being weightless. Laika proved it was possible, paving the way for human space travel. Due to a malfunction in the capsule separation some of the thermal insulation was torn away preventing the life support systems from being able to sufficiently cool the cabin as temperatures rose to 40 °C (104 °F), so Laika only survived 5 to 7 hours and probably suffered a miserable death from overheating after about 4 orbits. This was kept secret until 2002, originally the Soviets claimed Laika had lived for most a week in orbit.

However, Sputnik 2 was not designed to land, Laika had been doomed to die in space one way or another. There was a plan to euthanize her with a poison food ration before her oxygen ran out, but it never came down to that. The scientists had not wanted to do things this way. Aside from the inhumanity of it, you really can get a lot more data if you bring your test subject back. They had wanted to build a capsule that could make the round trip, but First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev demanded to have a Soviet spacecraft in orbit for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and there was no way to complete the more sophisticated capsule in time, so a simpler design was used that didn't include a way to return to Earth. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was safe for him to say so, one of the scientists said, "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."

No other animals were launched on one-way missions after Laika. At least not intentionally. Two more canine cosmonauts died when their capsule was blown up to prevent it from landing outside of Soviet controlled territory. But from 1960-1966 six other space dogs successfully orbited and returned.