Friday, November 03, 2017

Laika Flight 60th Anniversary

Laika (c. 1954 - 3 November 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth.  Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.

Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so Laika's survival was never expected.  The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure a Micro-g environment, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments.

-- Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika

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