Laika the Space Dog

On a cold and early morning in November 1957, a small dog of indeterminable breed stood on the third floor of a vast building on the Siberian steppe. The dog’s name was Kudryavka, although the engineers affectionately called her ‘Zhuchka’ which means ‘little bug’ in Russian. Outside the vast concrete complex known as the Baykonur Cosmodrom where Zhuchka stood, a huge Soyuz spaceship loomed, carrying a small chamber on the very top. The pressurised chamber was called Sputnik Dva and looked like an elongated ellipsoidal nest filled with instruments. Zhuchka stood still; she couldn’t do anything else since she was clad in a harness containing an intricate life-support system which among other things gave her access to a special high nutrition gel and water.

Before she had been put in her harness, she had been given a tender grooming; she had been bathed, combed and padded with an alcoholic solution, iodine and streptocide. All areas of her body attached to electrodes making her look extraterrestrial.

Zhuchka had been carefully chosen among other dogs held at Star City outside Moscow where rocket-genius Sergej Korolyov designed the Soviet spacecrafts. At the time when she stood on the floor not far from the spaceship, she was three years old and described as being good-natured and calm. A couple of hours later Zhuchka was placed in the chamber, attached to the instruments and the door was closed. Sometime later the spaceship left Baykonur and roared into space. During the lift-off, Zhuchka’s electrodes showed that she was well and when the Sputnik Dva was released from the carrier rocket and started its orbit into space, a rumour has it that someone in the control centre radioed Sputnik Dva and talked to Zhuchka who barked in answer. ‘How is she?’ another one asked ‘A true ‘barker’ said the first one. ‘Barker’, ‘Laika’ in Russian (also a name given to all Spitz-like dogs in Russia) was the name under which she was to become famous all over the world.

She seemed well for the first, second and third orbit around the planet, at the fourth orbit however, the thermal control system on the spacecraft failed, Laika’s cabin became severely overheated and after some time, sadly, no life signs could be recorded from her electrodes. After another 2,370 orbits, the Sputnik Dva capsule itself came to close to the Earth’s atmosphere and burned up, creating a spectacular funeral for its brave space pioneer.

Her death was the cause of an outrage among animal-friends, and the Soviet Space Command later expressed regret that it had taken Laika’s life so easy. Posthumously, Laika joined the ranks of other Cosmonauts who have died in service and was, like them, given the title of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. Her statue stands in Star City outside Moscow. Not long after Laika’s voyage, dogs Belka and Strelka were also sent into space where they too orbited a number of times before safely returning to Earth.

Wikipedia

Федеральная космическая

Feature Image by Bobbie, other images by pdsjmorris & texascosmonaut