Today in History—November 3: A Dog Is Launched into Space

On this day in 1957, the first earthling launched into orbit around our planet. (We don’t count the fruit flies launched a decade earlier, as their flight only crossed into the official boundaries of space by 1 mile and didn’t complete an orbit.)

It was the Cold War, the Space Race was on, and the Soviets were winning.

Just a month earlier, the U.S.S.R. had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. Humanity watched in awe as the capitalist and communist worlds competed to see which could better marshal its resources and science to venture into space.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Enter Laika, a little stray dog from Moscow who was about to make history—and pay a terrible price for it. Soviet scientists believed that a mutt from the streets would be tougher and more adaptable than a lab-bred dog.

She was small, calm, and about two years old when she was selected for the mission. In preparation, she was confined in progressively smaller spaces, spun in a centrifuge, and trained to eat food in jellied form.

But her story was neither a glorious adventure nor a laughing matter. Technology for returning a spacecraft safely from orbit had not yet been developed. Everyone involved understood that Laika would not be coming home. She survived only about five to seven hours after liftoff, dying when the temperature inside Sputnik 2 rose.

Three and a half years later another earthling followed Laika into orbit. (And this one came home.) Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth in 1961.

Eight years after that, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.

In 2008 a monument to Laika was unveiled in Moscow. She didn’t get to come home, but she was not forgotten. She helped chart the path to space, and history owes this little dog more than just a footnote.