Laika in her compartment that will be fitted into the Sputnik II and sent into space. paradoxoffFor years after the mission, the Soviets claimed that Laika survived her first day in space. They claimed that she drifted in orbit around the Earth for days. At last, she ate the poisoned food they’d prepared for her and passed peacefully onto the other side with the Earth below her. The truth didn’t come out until 2002, when one of the scientists, Dimitri Malashenkov, revealed the brutal fate Laika really met. Laika died within seven hours, sometime during her fourth circuit around the Earth, in excruciating pain. The temperature control system on the hastily built satellite malfunctioned. The shuttle started getting hotter and hotter, soon going well past 40 degrees Celsius (100 °F) and rising into sweltering extremes. Laika, who had calmed down when she’d become weightless, began to panic once more. On Earth, Laika had handlers who calmed her when the training became stressful. Now, though, those scientists could only watch the information tick in. They saw Laika’s her heart racing faster and faster until they couldn’t pick up any heartbeat at all. listverse
A rare picture of Laika in her space suit. PinterestSputnik II consisted of three units mounted in a conical frame, with a total mass of 508.3 kg. At the top was an experiment to measure solar x-ray and far ultraviolet radiation. metallandscapeA crowd of Soviet engineers gathers around the Sputnik II. Ria NovostiEarly Morning Launch of the Sputnik II. The second artificial Earth satellite was launched on November 3, 1957, at 2-30-42 GMT. It reached an orbit with a perigee of 225 km, a height of 1671 km and a period of 103.75 minutes. metallandscapeAfter five months and 2,570 orbits around the Earth, the satellite that had become Laika’s coffin fell down to the Earth. It streaked across the sky while people around the world watched, creating a small panic in the United States. listverseMushka, the dog who’d been kept on Earth as a “control dog,” followed Laika into space a little later. She was sent up in a rocket with a menagerie of dogs, guinea pigs, rats, mice, fruit flies, and plants, meant to study the effects of cosmic radiation. Mushka was to come home. During reentry, however, the retro-rocket meant to slow her craft down malfunctioned. She fell off trajectory and started to crash down toward the Earth. The Soviets had no way of knowing where she would land, and they feared it would be into American hands. In press reports, the Soviets claimed that Mushka’s spacecraft was burned up on reentry. The truth, though, was that there were explosives onboard. Fearing that their secrets would land in enemy territory, the Soviet scientists detonated the ship, killing every animal onboard. listverse“The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it,” said Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists on the team. “We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.” listverseA memorial in Laika’s honor. ViraNova
