First Earthling in space: Laika the dog.
Laika’s ship, Sputnik 2, had no capability to return to Earth. Her 1957 space flight to establish whether or not living beings could survive travel through space was a one-way mission.
It had been planned to euthanize Laika with poisoned food during her flight. She instead died from excessive heat on her fourth orbit around the Earth. Five months later, the spaceship and its canine passenger’s remains burned up as the vehicle’s decaying orbit brought it into Earth’s atmosphere.
Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists who worked on the mission, would later say, “Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it … We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”
Laika’s mission went on to become a touchstone in debates about the ethics of animal testing.
Laika appears on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow and has a monument of her own in Star City, Russia.
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