First of all, her real name was Kudryavka. "Little Curly," for her curly, samoyed-esque tail. Second of all, they sent her up there to die.
What they teach you in elementary school is that the Russians sent the first two satellites up into space and that the second one constituted the first "manned" orbit, with Laika on board. Yay! A dog in space! What kid doesn't get a kick out of that?
What they don't teach you is that after the successful launch of Sputnik--the first object launched into space--Kruschev ordered his space engineers to have a second, manned satellite ready to go one month later in time for the 40th anniversary of the Revolution. One month, folks. One. Because of the time crunch, the engineers did not have time to create a rocket that could bring anyone home safely from space. Only launch them out forever. All for propaganda's sake.
So they sent a dog. The best tempered dog they had. A dog unfailingly sweet after the most grueling training sessions. They re-named her "Laika" for the launch, because the name was more fierce. Laika, "barker." They put her in a special doggy space suit, strapped her into a tiny capsule and blasted her into space.
It was all over world news! "The Soviets still ahead in the space race! Laika in space! 'Muttnik!'" The official report was that she lived for four or five days in orbit and then was humanely put down and that great strides in research were made.
Actually...she died five hours into the flight, from stress and heat exhaustion. Just like that. A tiny life, gone. And the worst part is, it was kind of in vain. "The more time passes," said Oleg Georgivitch Galenko in 1998, "the more I'm sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog."
It totally made me cry, in case you were wondering. Check it out, if you can, though. It isn't all tears and sadness.
Doesn't this just look like the nose of a pooch you'd wanna pet?
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