Laika

She was a stray, picked up off the Moscow streets with two others because a dog that had survived a winter outdoors was thought able to survive anything. She weighed about six kilos, took to the training kindly, and was kept in cages made smaller and smaller over twenty days to accustom her to the capsule. One of the scientists took her home to play with his children in the last week, and wrote later that he wanted to do something nice for her, because she had so little time left. Sputnik 2 launched on 3 November 1957, four weeks after the first satellite, on an order that left no time to design a way of bringing anything back. She was the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Telemetry showed her pulse tripling at launch and taking three times the usual span to settle; the thermal insulation tore loose during separation, and the cabin temperature climbed past forty degrees. The Soviet account said she had lived a week and been put to sleep painlessly. In 2002 Dimitri Malashenkov, who had worked on the programme, said she had died of overheating within five to seven hours. Oleg Gazenko, who had trained her, said in 1998 that the mission had taught them nothing worth a dog's life. A monument was raised near the institute where she trained in 2008: a dog standing on the tail fin of a rocket.

Loved by · Vladimir Yazdovsky, Oleg Gazenko

Honours

• 1957First living creature to orbit the Earth, aboard Sputnik 2
• 1997Included on the memorial plaque to fallen cosmonauts at Star City
• 2008Monument unveiled at the Moscow institute where she trained

Their kind

Street dogs breed for the street: sound feet, a workable size, and a tolerance for cold and hunger that no pedigree selects for.

A life in seasons