Laika was a Sovietspace Dog. She was the first animal to orbit the earth and the first orbital death.
She was a stray, that was taken in and was trained with two other dogs along her side. Then she was eventually chosen to go up into space on Sputnik 2, (Nov.3 1957). The thought is sad, but the space craft was not meant to be retrievable and Laika was always intended to die. She died within hours after the launch, possibly due to overheating or a fail of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. Her death was also not made public untill 2002, instead they told people that she died because her oxygen supply ran out. Now, even though this was a tragic lose, it prooved that a human could be launched into space. Also, that they could feel weightlessness. It more or less paved a path for human spaceflight, and provided scientists with some of the first data on how a living organism would react to space environments.
Luckily they still honour this dog until this day. She has a monument in her honour in Russia. It maybe small but it holds a big place in the peoples hearts.
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