In 1957, a Soviet dog named Laika became the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Originally a stray, Laika was selected over two other trainees. Though she died a few hours after launch, her trip proved that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure weightlessness.

Laika (Russian: Лайка, meaning "Barker"; c. 1954 - November 3, 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth.

Handlers at the Soviet Academy of Sciences show off some of the dogs in their space program. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Russians launched missions that included passenger slots for at least 57 dogs. The number of animals that actually reached space is smaller, as several dogs went more than once.

A squirrel monkey, his body swathed in protective silicon rubber padding, is strapped into a capsule as part of a training exercise for spaceflight. A comrade of his known as Gordo was similarly secured for a 1958 fifteen-minute flight that ascended to a height of 310 miles. Though it is believed that Gordo survived the entirety of his flight, the parachute on his craft failed to open and he and his capsule were lost at sea.

The first two monkeys to survive their trip into space are presented at a NASA press conference in 1959. Able, on the left, a seven-pound rhesus monkey, and Baker, an 11-ounce squirrel monkey from Peru, withstood forces 38 times the normal pull of gravity and endured weightlessness for about 9 minutes during their historic flight. Able died four days after returning to earth during a relatively simple surgery to remove an infected electrode. Baker lived until 1984.

In early 1961, just a few months before Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched into orbit, NASA was using chimps to help iron out the kinks in its Mercury program. Approximately 20 of them were trained at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico on equipment simulating space flight, like the rocket sled, above.

Timed Task

The chimps in the Holloman training program were taught how to do simple tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. Jim, the chimp whose efforts are photographed here, has made a mistake: the experiment calls for him to hit the odd shape, in this case, the circle in the middle.

As 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, there was no expectation of Laika's survival. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was originally named Kudryavka (Russian: Кудрявка Little Curly). She underwent training with two other dogs, and was eventually selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.Laika died within hours after launch from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six, or as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure weightlessness, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments.