What Happened to the First Dog in Space?

Hey guys, we're going to be looking at what happened to the first dog in space.

we all know the astronauts who could all the credit for space exploration but did you know that some of the first things in space were animals we've already looked at the first monkey in space but now it's time for even more sad story the first dog in space but boy blast-off.

the dog at the center of this story is a female dog named Laika lekha was born in 1954 on the 3rd of November in the Soviet Union she was born in Moscow USSR which is now Moscow Russia lekha was actually what's known as a street dog this is a dog which is kind of wild and out on the streets so she had no home but in 1955 she was taken by a Soviet space program engineer she was taken by this man and selected to be on the Soviet spacecraft. 

Sputnik 2 the mission of Sputnik 2 was to triumph their previous launch of Sputnik 1 they wanted to amaze the world with the power of the Soviet Union remember at this time the USSR and the USA were at war this was known as the Cold War and during the Cold War was what was known as the space race this was basically a race as to who could do space exploration better the USA or the USSR well for testing Soviet officials decided.  

to do something with Sputnik 2 they wanted to put a dog into the rocket to see how long dogs could survive in zero-gravity Sputnik 2 also had instruments for measuring solar inter aliens and cosmic rays it also had a life-support machine with an oxygen generator and inside it was a fan which would activate whenever the cabin got over 15 degrees centigrade this fan was added to make sure the talk would always be cool and would survive for a long time now the mission. 

was amazing as it was launching the first living thing into orbit but the Soviets did not sugarcoat what was going to happen they said lekha was not going to return alive this caused outrage around the world that they would be sacrificing a dog but despite the bad PR, the mission went hair as part of Lakish. 

training she did some suborbital flights this is kind of like what astronauts do today before going out into space it's done in a controlled zero-gravity environment and really it's done in a zero-gravity room it's not done in a spaceship also to help laker adapt to Sputnik 2 she was kept in a smaller cage for 20 days before the mission. 

this cost Lake his blood pressure to double and she also began to get quite ill and restless Lake was also trained to eat a high nutrition gel that would be in her space food one day before the launch one of the engineers for the Soviet space program tote Lake a home to play with his kids the man was named dr. Vladimir Yadav ski he later wrote in his mole that Rekha was very quiet and charming he said he took a home to play with his kids to do something nice for lekha he knew she had little time left to live and wanted her to have a nice final day on earth. 

but he kind of felt too bad for Leakey as she was still put into the rocket by him then on the 3rd of November 1957 Sputnik 2 launched liftoff occurred at 5:30 a.m. Moscow time at first it was normal and Laker got into outer space the rocket was supposed to split into two.

but there was an error and part of it did not separate this cause of their thermal control system to malfunction remember how I told you about the fan and the cooling system they put in before yeah that stopped working and lekha began to overheat the cabin was not supposed to get above 15 degrees centigrade. 

but instead it got up to 40 degrees centigrade sadly lekha had nowhere to go and could do nothing but wait until she passed away within a few minutes Laker did overheat and passed away this is a very sad way to go she was actually supposed to be poisoned by a poisoned food package the scientists had put in the rocket. 

but instead sadly from this malfunction lekha passed away from overheating for about five months Sputnik 2 and Lakers' body revolved around the earth it floated in space and orbited the earth two thousand five hundred and seventy times then 162 days after the launch. 

Sputnik 2 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere however in reentry to the Earth's atmosphere Sputnik 2 burns her and of course so did Lakers remains at first the Soviet Union said that Laker had passed away painlessly in orbit and they said it happened about a week after blast-off but that was actually not the case obviously after the blast-off it took like just a few hours to pass away and sadly it likely was not painless at all the USSR said this so they wouldn't get bad publicity and also.

so that they looked better in the space race but many years later in 2002 the real truth about what happened was revealed lakyn now has a big legacy in Russia and around the world in Moscow there's a statue to voted to Laker and it also brought up many ethical questions about the USA and USSR using animals for the space race and after Laker all future space missions carrying dogs were designed to be recovered so that was the sad story of Laker in space.