The first launch of animals into space. What animals have been to space? Preparing experimental dogs for “flight” in a pressure chamber. The dog Gypsy is dressed in a protective suit, the dog Mishka will also be ready soon

Dogs Belka and Strelka. After the flight of the dog Laika in 1957, which did not return to Earth (more about her will be discussed later), it was decided to send the dogs on a daily orbital flight with the possibility of returning to Earth in a descent module. For the space flight, it was necessary to select dogs with a light color (so they are better visible on the monitors of observation devices), whose weight does not exceed 6 kg, and whose height is 35 cm, and they must be female (it is easier for them to develop a device for relieving themselves ). And besides, the dogs had to be attractive, because perhaps they would be featured in the media. The outbred dogs Belka and Strelka were suitable for all these parameters. As part of the preparation of these animals for flight, they were taught to eat jelly-like food, which was designed to meet the need for water and nutrition on board the ship. And the most difficult thing was to teach the dogs to spend a long time in a small cramped container in isolation and noise. To do this, Belka and Strelka were kept for eight days in a metal box comparable in size to the container of the descent module. At the last stage of training, the dogs were tested on a vibration stand and a centrifuge. Two hours before the launch of Sputnik 5, which occurred on August 19, 1960 at 11:44 Moscow time, a cabin with dogs was placed in the spacecraft. And as soon as it took off and began to gain altitude, the animals experienced very rapid breathing and pulse. The stress stopped only after Sputnik 5 took off. And although most of the flight the animals behaved quite calmly, during the fourth orbit around the Earth, the Squirrel began to fight and bark, trying to remove the belts. She felt sick. Subsequently, after analyzing this condition of the dog, scientists decided to limit human space flight to one orbit around the Earth. Belka and Strelka completed 17 complete orbits in approximately 25 hours, covering a distance of 700 thousand km. It is also worth noting that Belka and Strelka were stand-ins for the dogs Chaika and Lisichka, who died during the launch of the Vostok 1K No. 1 spacecraft on July 28, 1960. Then the rocket fell to the ground and exploded at 38 seconds. Laika dog. The very first animal launched into Earth orbit was the Soviet dog Laika. Although there were two more contenders for this flight - stray dogs Mukha and Albina, who had already made a couple of suborbital flights earlier. But scientists felt sorry for Albina, because she was expecting offspring, and the upcoming flight did not involve the astronaut returning to Earth. This was technically impossible. So, the choice fell on Laika. During training, she spent a long time in a mock-up container, and just before the flight she underwent surgery: breathing and pulse sensors were implanted. A few hours before the flight, which took place on November 3, 1957, the container with Laika was placed on the ship. At first she had an increased heart rate, but it returned to almost normal values ​​when the dog was in zero gravity. And 5-7 hours after the launch, having completed 4 orbits around the Earth, the dog died from stress and overheating, although it was expected that she would live for about a week. There is a version that death occurred due to an error in calculating the satellite's area and the lack of a thermal control system (during the flight the temperature in the room reached 40°C). And also in 2002, an opinion appeared that the death of the dog occurred as a result of the oxygen supply being cut off. One way or another, the animal died. After this, the satellite made another 2,370 orbits around the Earth and burned up in the atmosphere on April 14, 1958. However, after the failed flight, a number of more tests were carried out with similar conditions on Earth, since a special commission from the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers did not believe in the existence of a design error. As a result of these tests, two more dogs died. The death of Laika was not announced ahead of schedule for a long time in the USSR, transmitting data on the well-being of the already dead animal. The media reported his death only a week after the dog was launched into space: it was said that Laika had been euthanized. But, of course, they learned about the true causes of the animal’s death much later. And when this happened, it caused unprecedented criticism from animal rights activists in Western countries. Many letters came from them expressing protest against the cruel treatment of animals, and there were even sarcastic proposals to send the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev into space instead of dogs. The famous newspaper The New York Times, in its issue of November 5, 1957, called Laika “the shaggiest, loneliest and most unfortunate dog in the world.” Monkeys Able and Miss Baker. Before humans started going into space, several animals were sent there, including monkeys. The Soviet Union and Russia sent monkeys into space from 1983 to 1996, the United States from 1948 to 1985, and France sent two monkeys in 1967. In total, about 30 monkeys have taken part in space programs, and none of them has flown into space more than once. Early in the development of space flight, mortality among monkeys was extremely high. For example, in the United States, more than half of the animals involved in launches from 1940 to 1950 died during the flights or shortly after them. The first monkeys to survive flight were Able the rhesus monkey and Miss Baker the squirrel monkey. All previous space flights with monkeys on board ended in the death of the animals from suffocation or failure of the parachute system. Able was born at the Kansas Zoo (USA), and Miss Baker was purchased at a pet store in Miami, Florida. Both were taken to the Naval Air Medical School in Pensacola (USA). After training, in the early morning of May 28, 1959, the monkeys were sent into space aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket from Cape Canaveral. They rose to an altitude of 480 km and flew for 16 minutes, nine minutes of which they were in zero gravity. The flight speed exceeded 16,000 km/h. During the flight, Able had high blood pressure and rapid breathing, and three days after the successful landing, the monkey died during the removal of the electrodes implanted in her body: she could not bear the anesthesia. Sensors were implanted into the brain, muscles and tendons to record movement activity during flight. Miss Baker died on November 29, 1984 at the age of 27 from kidney failure. She has reached the maximum age for her species. Able's stuffed animal is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. And Miss Baker is buried on the territory of the US Space and Rocket Center in Hunstville (Alabama). On her tombstone there is always her favorite delicacy - several bananas. Dog Zvezdochka. 18 days before Yuri Gagarin's flight, the USSR sent Sputnik 10 into space with the dog Zvezdochka on board. This single-orbit flight took place on March 25, 1961. In addition to the dog, there was a wooden dummy “Ivan Ivanovich” on board the ship, which, as planned, was ejected. The ship with Zvezdochka on board landed near the village of Karsha in the Perm region. That day the weather was bad, and the search group did not start searching for a long time. However, the descent vehicle with the dog was found by a passerby, who fed the animal and allowed it to warm up. A search party arrived later. This flight was the final check of the spacecraft before flying into space with a person on board. However, Zvezdochka was not the last dog to be sent into space. Chimpanzee Ham. Born in Cameroon, Africa, the chimpanzee Ham was the first hominid sent into space. In July 1959, three-year-old Ham began to be trained to perform tasks in response to specific light and sound signals. If the chimpanzee performed the task correctly, he was given a banana ball, and if not, he received an electric shock to the soles of his feet. On January 31, 1961, Ham was launched on the Mercury-Redstone 2 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on a suborbital flight that lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds. After its completion, the capsule with Ham splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, and a rescue ship discovered it the next day. Ham's flight was the penultimate one before American astronaut Alan Shepard's flight into space (the last was the flight of the chimpanzee Enos). After the chimpanzee's flight, Ham lived for 17 years at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., before being transferred to the North Carolina Zoo, where he remained for the rest of his life. Ham died at the age of 26 on January 19, 1983. Rats Hector, Castor And Pollux. To study mammal vigilance in zero gravity, scientists in 1961 decided to send rats into space on the Veronique AGI 24 weather rocket, developed in France. For this purpose, electrodes were inserted into the rat's brain to read brain signals. Moreover, the first surgical interventions to implant electrodes took about 10 hours, and the mortality rate during such operations was extremely high. The rodent on which the experiment was conducted was only used for 3-6 months due to the aging of the animal and necrosis of the skull, which was caused by the glue that fixed the connector to the skull. Thus, the first flight of a rat on a Veronique AGI 24 took place on February 22, 1961. During it, the rat was held in an extended position in a container using a special vest. In this case, the first rat that was placed in the container gnawed through a bundle of cables that read information, for which it was replaced by another rat. 40 minutes after launch, the rat, as planned, was evacuated from the rocket, and the next day it was brought to Paris. There, journalists who met the scientists with the rodent gave the rat the nickname Hector. 6 months after the flight, Hector was euthanized to study the effects of weightlessness on the electrodes in his body. Nevertheless, Hector's flight was not the last in the study of animal vigilance in conditions of weightlessness. At the next stage, a paired launch was carried out with an interval of three days, which should have made it possible to observe two animals in parallel. So, on October 15, 1962, Veronique AGI 37 was launched with rats Castor and Pollux. For technical reasons, the missile began its flight later than planned, and due to the loss of VHF communication with the search helicopter, the warhead separated from the missile was discovered only an hour and 15 minutes later. During this time, Castor died from overheating, as the temperature in the container in which he was upside down exceeded 40°C. Pollux, sent into space on October 18, 1962, suffered the same fate. Search helicopters were never able to locate the warhead with the container containing the animal. Felicette the cat. At the third stage of studying animal vigilance in conditions of weightlessness, cats were used. On the streets of Paris, scientists caught 30 stray cats and cats, after which they began preparing the animals for flight, including spinning in a centrifuge and training in a pressure chamber. 14 cats passed the selection, among which was Felix the cat. Felix had already been prepared for the flight and had electrodes implanted in his brain, but in the last minutes the lucky man was able to escape. The astronaut was urgently replaced: the cat Felicette was chosen. The suborbital flight on the Veronique AGI47 rocket took place on October 18, 1963. The state of weightlessness lasted 5 minutes 2 seconds. After the flight, the rescue service discovered a capsule with a cat separated from the rocket 13 minutes after launch. And according to the data obtained after the flight, the cat felt well. Felicette quickly became famous, and the flight was hailed by the media as an outstanding achievement. However, photographs of a cat with electrodes implanted in its head that accompanied the publication in the press aroused criticism from many readers and fighters against cruelty to animals. And on October 24, 1963, another space flight took place under similar conditions with a cat on board. The animal with the unnamed number SS 333 died because the head of the rocket with the capsule was found only two days after its return to Earth. Dogs Veterok and Ugolek. The first longest flight in the history of astronautics was made by the dogs Veterok and Ugolek. The launch took place on February 22, 1966, and the flight ended 22 days later (the Kosmos-110 biosatellite landed on March 17). After the flight, the dogs were very weak, they had a strong heartbeat and constant thirst. In addition, when the nylon suits were removed from them, it was discovered that the animals had no hair, and diaper rash and bedsores appeared. Veterok and Ugolek spent their entire lives after the flight in the vivarium of the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine. By the way, the record for the longest flight of dogs was broken five years later: Soviet cosmonauts spent 23 days, 18 hours and 21 minutes at the Salyut orbital station.

Before man first took off from the ground with the help of a hot air balloon, our “little brothers” - the duck, the rooster and the ram - took to the air. Animals also paved the way to space. It was with their help that various equipment and life support systems were tested, and as a result, the answer was given to the main question of the beginning of the space age: how will a living creature feel in conditions never encountered on Earth - in weightlessness?
When the development of rocket technology made the prospect of delivering humans beyond the atmosphere and into low-Earth orbit a very real possibility, several countries immediately began developing corresponding spacecraft. The first “passengers” of these devices, of course, were representatives of the animal world.
We would like to tell you about little-known space heroes. We will talk about experiments undertaken by Soviet scientists in preparation for manned space flight.

At the end of the 40s of the 20th century, doctors were already familiar with the reaction of the human and animal bodies to overloads, vibrations, noise and other factors of airplane flights. However, they had no experimental data on the biological effects of weightlessness.
In the Soviet Union, biological experiments on high-altitude (geophysical) rockets were started by a group of employees of the Research Testing Institute of Aviation Medicine (NIIAM) of the Air Force of the USSR Ministry of Defense in 1951 under the leadership of V.I. Yazdovsky. Before that, he headed the laboratory of pressurized cabins and spacesuits at NIIAM and mainly conducted research on new aircraft designed by Tupolev, who recommended him to Korolev.
S.P. Korolev organized meetings between Yazdovsky and the Minister of the USSR Armed Forces, Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky, and with the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, S.I. Vavilov, who promised full support for the research, and Korolev agreed to take over the laboratory for his own financial support.
In 1949, in accordance with the decision of the Minister of the Armed Forces Vasilevsky, the conduct of biological and medical research was entrusted to NIIIAM, and the specific implementation was entrusted to V.I. Yazdovsky. The group of researchers included doctors A.V. Pokrovsky, V.I. Popov, engineer B.G. Buylov and aviation technician B.V. Blinov.
In 1950, the first research work in the field of space medicine was opened at NIIIAM - “Physiological and hygienic substantiation of the possibilities of flight in special conditions.” The objects of research initially were mice, rats, and guinea pigs. But these animals are good for experiments in a laboratory setting. Working with higher animals - monkeys, which are biologically closer to humans than other creatures - is methodologically complex: they are difficult to train and slowly get used to unusual conditions. True, the Americans sent monkeys on rocket flights, but only in a state of deep anesthesia, which reduces the value of the experiment, since anesthesia “turns off” the activity of the cerebral cortex.
In the end, Soviet scientists settled on dogs. The physiology of these animals has been well studied, they are relatively easy to train, quickly adapt to unusual conditions and behave quite calmly when restrained in special equipment. Mongrels were preferred to dogs with pedigrees for a simple reason: doctors believed that yard dogs from the first day are forced to fight for survival and are better able to tolerate stressful situations. However, remembering that the dogs would have to show off on the pages of newspapers, they chose “objects” that were beautiful, slender, with "intelligent"faces.
To carry out the work, 32 mongrels, which were caught in Moscow gateways, were brought to the vivarium of NIIAM. Candidates were selected according to strictly specified parameters: a certain weight, height no higher than 35 cm, which was determined by the size of the cabin for one of the requirements - since many sensors had to be attached to the skin of the animal. In the fall of 1950, the selected mongrels began intensive training. As Soviet newspapers later wrote, within a few months: “... the dogs passed all types of tests. They can remain in the cabin for a long time without moving, and endure large overloads and vibrations. Animals are not afraid of sounds, they know how to sit in their experimental equipment, making it possible to record the biocurrents of the heart, muscles, brain, blood pressure, breathing patterns, etc.” By the summer of 1951, NIIAM completed training of the first 14 dogs.
From July 1951 to June 1960, three series of experiments were carried out during launches of geophysical rockets from the Kapustin Yar test site.
The first series - in July-September 1951 - was carried out on geophysical rockets R-1B and R-1V, rising to an altitude of 100 km or more. These missiles were a modification of the “royal” R-1. They differed in that compartments were mounted in their head section, extending the rocket by 3 m. Directly adjacent to the instrument compartment was a compartment with equipment designed to study the composition of primary cosmic radiation and its interaction with matter - FIAN-1 (Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences). In front of it there was a sealed compartment and a head recovery system along with a pressurized cabin. For this purpose, a parachute system was mounted between the pressurized cabin and the FIAN-1 compartment. Two dogs were placed in a sealed compartment with a volume of 0.28 m3, secured with seat belts on special trays. A film camera hung above them, filming the animals throughout the flight. The R-1 B rocket differed from the R-1 B only in that instead of the FIAN equipment, a parachute rescue system for the entire rocket body was installed. It rose to a height of about 100 km, after which the head part with the animals separated and fell to the ground on its own parachute.
The first launch of dogs into a suborbital flight took place early in the morning of July 22, 1951 from the Kapustin Yar training ground. Such an early launch time is explained by the fact that before sunrise the air is especially clean, making observation and control of the rocket easier. There were no missile launchers back then, so it was important for the sun to illuminate the rocket from over the horizon. The R-1B with testers Dezik and Tsygan - the calmest and most trained members of the squad - rose to 87 km 700 m, the engine was switched off, the head section with the animals separated, and after 15 minutes the parachute smoothly descended near the launch pad. Participants in the experiment rushed to the possible landing site. Everyone wanted to see the space pioneers. The lucky ones who were the first to reach the cabin were already looking through the window. Their loud cries could be heard: “Alive, alive!”

At the landing site of the first quadrupeds
cosmonauts Gypsy and Desik.
With animals V. I. Popov and A. D. Seryapin

Both dogs felt good in all respects. This meant that a living creature could endure such a flight, primarily the accompanying overloads and short-term weightlessness. A week later, a similar launch was made on the R-1 B rocket, in which Dezik, who had already flown, and his new partner Lisa participated. It was planned to study the effect of repeated flight on a dog on Desik. When the capsule fell, the parachute did not open, and both dogs died.
Immediately after the tragedy, the first surviving test pilot, Gypsy, was removed from flying. He was taken in by the chairman of the state commission, Academician Blagonravov. Space puppies were given as medals for special merits.
As part of this series of experiments, four more launches took place, in which the dogs Mishka, Chizhik, Smely, Ryzhik, ZIB and Neputevy participated. ZIB was not initially prepared for flights; his place was to be taken by a dog named Rozhok. The laboratory technician, who was taking the dogs for a walk before the start, accidentally let Rozhk off the leash, and he ran off into the steppe. There were no other dogs at the training ground that day - they were being prepared for the next stage of testing in Moscow - and it was impossible to replace him with a trained dog. As a result, a dog of suitable size was picked up near the soldier’s canteen and included in the flight program, and together they came up with the nickname ZIB - “spare for the missing Bobik.”

Four-legged astronaut ZIB

In the confusion, they didn’t even understand that the “spare” was, in essence, a puppy - this became clear after the flight. The untrained ZIB tolerated the launch well, and in official reports he was subsequently listed as an untrained test pilot flying under a special program. When Sergei Pavlovich became aware of this “fraud”, he did not get angry at all, but said with warmth in his voice: “Yes, our ships will soon fly into space on trade union vouchers - for vacation!”
During the second series of experiments (July 1954 - June 1956), work was carried out to ensure the safety of animals in a spacesuit during depressurization of the cabin and ejection in the upper atmosphere. Flights were carried out on R-1D and R-1E rockets to altitudes of up to 110 km. On the R-1D - unlike the R-1B and R-1B missiles, where experimental animals were rescued together with a sealed compartment by parachute - each of the two dogs was ejected in a spacesuit mounted on a special trolley with a parachute system and a life support system. In addition, on the R-1D rocket, instead of the FIAN-1 equipment compartment, equipment was installed to study the altitude distribution of ionization density in the ionosphere and to study the propagation of ultra-long waves in the atmosphere and outer space. The difference between the R-1E rocket and the R-1D was that another attempt was made to find a design solution that would save the rocket body. All flights were carried out according to the same pattern. The rockets ascended to an altitude of about 100 km. The effect of weightlessness lasted about 3.7 minutes. On the descending section of the trajectory at an altitude of 75-86 km, the animal on the right cart was ejected. After ejection, the cart fell freely for three seconds, after which the parachute system was turned on (the overload at the moment the parachute opened was up to 7g). At an altitude of 39-46 km, the animal ejected on the left trolley, and after a free fall at an altitude of 3.8 km, the parachute opened. The carts, as a rule, landed at a distance of 3 (left) to 70 (right) kilometers from the launch site.
The first launch using this system was carried out on June 26, 1954 with the dogs Ryzhik and Fox. The animals survived the flight and ejection safely. The series included 9 starts, in which 12 dogs took part. Five of them died. In particular, during the launch of Fox and Bulba on February 5, 1955, during takeoff, the rocket veered to the side, the stabilization rudders acted too sharply, and the dogs were thrown out of the cabin by inertia. The flight of the dog Malyshka ended in an unusual way on November 2, 1955.

Baby and Albina

From the ground it was visible how the parachute with the descending trolley began to be blown to the side by gusts of wind. In addition, a snowstorm began in the landing area. A few minutes later the parachute disappeared from sight altogether. The planes and helicopters sent to search could not find the Baby either that day or the next, although the bright spot of the parachute lying on the ground should have been noticeable from afar. On the third day, some members of the commission were already sure that the dog had died, but Korolev allowed the area of ​​possible landing to be examined by car. When, in the evening, the members of the search group were already despairing and turned home, one of the soldiers suddenly asked: “Let’s look at that hummock over there!” My intuition did not disappoint: behind the hummock lay a cart with Baby, but for some reason without a parachute. The dog in the spacesuit was alive, having spent three days without food (it’s good that the helmet had a hatch that automatically opened at an altitude of 4000 m and provided air access!). As it turned out later, the cart landed near a flock of sheep. The shepherd cut off his parachute and left with his flock away from this place. Search teams from the air could not detect the cart, mistaking it for a natural hummock, of which there are plenty in the steppe.
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, it was decided to launch a satellite with a living creature on board. By that time, experience had already been accumulated that the animal was capable of surviving short-term vertical flight on a rocket. But now the dog had to stay in space for several days. How it will endure weightlessness, vibrations, overloads on takeoff, temperature changes, everything had to be foreseen by scientists, biologists and doctors.
In the construction of the pressurized cabin of Sputnik 2, in which Laika was supposed to fly, with the exception of the designers, doctors and engineers V. I. Danileiko, L. A. Grebenev, V. S. Georgievsky, V. G. Builov and A. participated. I. Afanasyev. The sealed cabin looked like a cylinder with a convex bottom. The cabin had an automatic power supply and an air conditioning system, which was a regeneration unit.

The first astronaut dog Laika

The air regeneration device, designed for 7 days of operation, consisted of plates of highly active chemical compounds through which air passed to enrich it with oxygen and remove water vapor and carbon dioxide. The regeneration devices were located in special casings to the left and right of the dog. They were developed by A.D. Seryapin and Z.S. Skuridina.
The Biophyspribor association was developing the KMA-01 equipment for recording animal physiology data. “KMA-01” could record pulse, respiratory rate, blood pressure, take an electrocardiogram and body temperature.
The feeding machine was an automatic container, the sealed cells of which contained a jelly-like nutritional mixture. Twice a day the machine opened the lid of a container containing food rich in proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and water. Along with the creation of a feeding machine, an optimal dog diet was also developed.
For experimental launches to confirm the safety of space flights, mice, rats and dogs were offered. The option of launching with monkeys was also considered, but the choice fell on dogs, since they are better trained and calmer than monkeys.

The designers set the weight limit for dogs at 6-7 kg, but small purebred dogs were not suitable for flying; most often they were pampered, too demanding of food and did not have enough endurance (as mentioned above). Therefore, the dogs were taken from a stray animal kennel. Based on the recommendations of specialists in film, photography and television equipment, it was decided to select white dogs, because white ones looked better on camera. All whites were then screened out based on the results of training in pressure chambers, centrifuges and vibration stands.
Of the 10 dogs, 3 were candidates for the first space flight with a living creature on board: Albina, Laika and Mukha. Albina had already made 2 suborbital flights, but they took pity on her because she was expecting offspring, and they decided that she would be a backup. The fly was not chosen due to the slight curvature of its legs, which would have looked ugly in photographs, and it was made "technological dog." The operation of equipment and various systems was tested on it.
Before the flight, Laika underwent surgery, during which breathing sensors were installed on her ribs and a pulse sensor near the carotid artery.
During the last stage, the dogs were trained for a long time in a mock-up container. When Laika was already at Baikonur, she was put in a cabin for several hours, where she got used to the feeding trough, wearing sensors, overalls, a sewage disposal device and being in a confined space.

Preparing Laika before flight

Laika's overalls were attached to the container with small cables. Their length allowed Laika to take a lying or sitting position, as well as move back and forth a little. In the lower third of the cables there were contact-rheostatic sensors, the purpose of which was to record motor activity.
On the morning of October 31, 1957, preparations began for landing on the satellite. Laika's skin was treated with diluted alcohol, and the places where the wires from the sensors exited were treated with iodine. In the middle of the day, Laika was placed in a sealed chamber, and at one in the morning she was installed on a rocket. Shortly before the flight, it was necessary to depressurize the chamber and give him water to drink: the observing medical staff thought that the dog was thirsty.

Four-legged cosmonaut Laika before flight

Exactly on the appointed day, the satellite and dogs were delivered to the cosmodrome. The container with Laika was sealed three days before the start. On November 3, 1957, at half past five in the morning Moscow time, a rocket carrying the second artificial Earth satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. On board the satellite, in a space kennel the size of a washing machine, there was a two-year-old mongrel weighing about six kilograms named Laika. At the launch, the dog's heart beat at a rate of 260 beats per minute, three times higher than normal, but when the satellite entered orbit, radio signals transmitted to Earth by telemetry equipment let scientists know that the first satellite dog had entered space alive.
Telemetric data showed that after the overload, when Laika was already in weightlessness, the pulse rate was restored to almost normal values, motor activity became moderate, movements were short and smooth. But it took 3 times longer to normalize the pulse than in ground-based experiments. An electrocardiogram showed no pathological changes.

Launch of the second artificial satellite
Earth Sputnik 2 with Laika on board

“The shaggiest, loneliest, most miserable dog in the world, reportedly named Lemon, which means “little lemon” […] yesterday circled the Earth at an altitude of over 1,000 miles at a speed of 18 thousand miles per hour,” - this is how the New York Times newspaper of November 5, 1957 described the first dog in orbit.
The Soviet press was stingy with details - hence the initial confusion with the name. However, for greater effect, it was immediately noted that the launch was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution.
At that moment, few doubted that the USSR had won the space race by launching a second satellite, and even with a passenger on board, just a month after the first.
Now everyone was most interested in whether Laika would return to Earth. At first, hopes for the return of the first “space dog” were actively fueled by the Western media. They even reported details of the planned return, citing an unnamed Soviet scientist: the container with the passenger would separate from the satellite, and then the dog would be thrown out of the cabin, and it would complete its descent to Earth by parachute.
However, a few days later, mentions of Laika disappeared altogether from Soviet reports, and on the eighth day after the launch, the TASS news agency informed the world that radio signals from the satellite had ceased to arrive.
In fact, those initiated into the details of the launch knew in advance that Laika would fly only in one direction. The experimenters, who battened down the container with the dog three days before the start, understood that it would not come out alive. Vladimir Yazdovsky, who headed the experiments on dogs, recalled that shortly before the launch he took Laika home to play with the children: “I wanted to do something nice for the dog. After all, she didn’t have long to live.”
It was calculated that the dog would live on board for a week. It was for this period that supplies of food and oxygen were provided. And so that the animal does not suffer after the air runs out, the designers came up with a syringe with which a soporific injection will be given. But in zero gravity, Laika was alive for 4 orbits around the Earth. Due to an error in calculating the satellite's area and the lack of a thermal control system, the temperature during this time rose to 40°C. The dog died from overheating. The satellite itself made 2,570 orbits around the Earth, then burned up in the atmosphere on April 4, 1958.
For 7 days, the USSR transmitted data on the well-being of an already dead dog. Only a week later, from the moment of launch, the USSR announced that Laika had allegedly been euthanized. This caused an unprecedented storm of criticism in Western countries from animal rights activists. The Kremlin received many letters protesting against cruelty to animals and even with sarcastic proposals to send the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev into space instead of a dog.
Some employees involved in the preparation of Laika had a psychologically difficult time with the death of the dog. Soviet physiologist O. G. Gazenko talks about his psychological state after the launch of Laika: “The launch itself and receiving... information is all very cool. But when you understand that you can’t bring this Laika back, that she’s dying there, and that you can’t do anything, and that no one, not just me, no one can bring her back, because there’s no system for returning her, it’s something very heavy feeling. Do you know? When I returned to Moscow from the cosmodrome, and for some time there was still jubilation: speeches on the radio, in newspapers, I left the city. Do you understand? I wanted some privacy.”
A special commission from the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers did not believe that Laika died due to a design error, and ordered experiments with similar conditions on Earth, as a result of which 2 more dogs died.
For many years, there was an opinion that Laika spent several days in orbit - the supplies of food and oxygen in her cabin were designed for a week, and then she was either poisoned or euthanized. The true circumstances of the death of the first space dog were finally clarified only 45 years later, when an employee of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, Dmitry Malashenkov, told scientists at a congress in Houston that Laika died just a few hours after launch - from overheating and stress.
In a hurry to launch the second satellite for the national holiday, as Nikita Khrushchev ordered, the designers decided not to undock the last stage of the rocket from the cabin with Laika. Most likely, it was from this that the cabin became heated, and Laika simply suffocated in her “metal coffin” somewhere on the fourth orbit around the Earth.
After the flight of the dog Laika, who did not return to Earth, in 1957, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was given the task of preparing dogs for a daily orbital flight with the possibility of returning back in the descent module.

Dog handlers at the USSR Academy of Sciences demonstrate
their best dogs to participate in the space program

12 dogs were selected for the experiment. The initial selection was carried out using a special method - dogs had to weigh no more than 6 kilograms and be up to 35 centimeters high, and be from two to six years old. Only females were selected because it was easier to develop a cesspool device (toilet) for them. Again, the color should be light for better viewing on monitor screens. The dogs had to look attractive in case they were featured in the media.
The main part of the dogs' preparation for flight took place at the production base of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems in Moscow. For several months, applicants were accustomed to long stays in small cabins in conditions of prolonged isolation and noise. The dogs got used to eating special food from feeding machines, wearing clothes and sensors, and going to the toilet. Food, which was a jelly-like mass designed to fully meet the needs of animals for food and water, was developed by I. S. Balakhovsky. The most difficult thing was to accustom the animals to small volumes and confined spaces. To do this, they were placed in a metal box that matched the size of the container of the descent module, and then for a long time they were placed in a mock-up of the spacecraft. Despite the fact that a one-day flight into space was planned, the dogs were trained for a longer period - up to eight days. In the containers, which were designed to be double occupants, they could see and hear each other.
On July 28, 1960, a launch vehicle launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. She was supposed to launch a satellite ship into low-Earth orbit, in which there were two dogs - Fox and Seagull.

Chanterelle and Seagull

Due to an accident in the first stage of the launch vehicle, the launch ended in failure; at the 19th second of flight, the side block of the first stage of the launch vehicle collapsed, causing it to fall and explode, killing the dogs.
After the disaster, it was decided to launch backup dogs Belka and Strelka, one of the most adaptable dog candidates. The squirrel, a white mongrel female, was the leader of the team, the most active and sociable. During training she showed the best results, was among the first to approach the bowl of food, and was the first to learn to bark if something went wrong. Strelka, a light-colored mongrel female with brown spots, was timid and a little withdrawn, but nevertheless friendly. Both dogs were about two and a half years old at the time of the space flight. At first Belka and Strelka had other names - Albina (from the Latin Alba - white) and Marquise. The Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, demanded that the names of the dogs be changed from foreign to Russian. As a result, Albina and Marquise became Belka and Strelka.

Belka and Strelka

The final stage of training involved testing animals in conditions close to real orbital flight conditions. Dogs in special clothing with sensors and sewage disposal devices were in a sealed cabin. Belka and Strelka successfully passed tests on a vibration stand and centrifuge and were placed in pre-flight conditions. The dogs were monitored around the clock by doctors and laboratory assistants, who, while on duty, noted in a special journal the changes that occurred during the day. Since the launch of animals and other biological objects was approaching, the laboratory staff worked with great inspiration and full dedication.
Only almost three years later, scientists will be able to send dogs into orbit again - and this time bring them back in an ejection container. Launch of the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft from launch complex No. 1. Belka and Strelka launched into space from the same complex on a rocket of the same family in 1960.
On August 19, 1960 at 11:44 Moscow time, the second spacecraft-satellite was successfully launched into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from launch complex No. 1. The cabin in which Belka and Strelka were located was placed in the ship two hours before the launch. The launch was successful; the rocket lifted off from the launch pad and put the spacecraft into orbit as usual. During the launch and climb, the dogs experienced very rapid breathing and pulse, but when the ship was put into orbit, they calmed down.

Belka and Strelka at a doctor's appointment

Sputnik 5 is the fifth spacecraft of the Sputnik series, launched on August 19, 1960 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In fact, it was the second test prototype of the Vostok spacecraft, used for the first human space flight (the first prototype was Sputnik 4). To resolve the scientific and technical issues that arose during the creation of the spacecraft, the country's scientific and engineering institutions were involved. The ship consisted of two parts - the cabin and the instrument compartment. The cabin contained animal life support equipment: with a tray, a feeding machine, a sewage system, a ventilation system, containers for small biological objects and a microphone for monitoring the noise level in the cabin during the flight; ejection and pyrotechnic means, equipment for biological experiments, part of the equipment for scientific research: radio transmitters for direction finding after landing, television cameras with a system of illumination and mirrors, blocks with nuclear photo emulsions, part of the equipment for the attitude control system, equipment for recording a number of technical parameters (angular velocities, overloads , temperatures, noise, etc.), automatic systems that ensure landing, equipment for recording data on the operation of instruments, as well as the physiological parameters of dogs on the descent site, and an ejection container - one of the options for the system for returning astronauts to Earth using parachutes, developed for future human flights. Manufactured at OKB-1 under the personal supervision of S.P. Korolev in the city of Kaliningrad near Moscow (now Korolev).

Launch of the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft from
launch complex No. 1.
From the same complex on a rocket
the same family started
Belka and Strelka into space in 1960

A whole menagerie was sent on board: 2 dogs - Belka and Strelka, 28 laboratory mice, 2 white rats, 15 flasks contained fruit flies, as well as plants - Tradescantia and Chlorella, fungal cultures, seeds of corn, wheat, peas, onions, some types of microbes and other biological objects. The mass of the satellite ship without the last stage of the launch vehicle was 4600 kg.
The pressure, temperature and humidity of the air in the ship's cabin were ensured by life systems within the established norms. Air purification was carried out periodically. Feeding machines provided Belka and Strelka with food and water twice a day, as part of an experiment on the possibility of eating in zero gravity. Registration of physiological functions throughout the flight was provided by a specially designed set of medical research equipment. The air regeneration installation contained a special regeneration substance that absorbed carbon dioxide and water vapor and released the required amount of oxygen. The supply of regenerative substance provided the animals' oxygen needs for a long time.

on the ship "Sputnik -5"

For the first time in the history of astronautics, the condition and behavior of dogs was constantly monitored using a television system. Video information transmitted from the ship during the passage of the satellite ship in the coverage area of ​​ground receiving points was recorded on film. Later, when viewing this film, it was possible to determine how the animal behaved at a certain moment and what physiological changes occurred during this period. In addition, the information accumulated while the ship was out of sight of ground services was transmitted to Earth later. During the flight, pulse rate, respiration rate, blood pressure (in the carotid arteries), electrocardiograms, phonocardiograms (heart sounds), motor activity of animals and body temperature were recorded. The coordination of animal movements was studied using television and contact-rheostatic sensors that perceived animal movements and transmitted them via telemetry. Medical information from the satellite ship was transmitted to ground-based radio telemetry systems.

Orbital flight Belka and Strelka
on the ship "Sputnik -5"

Physiologists processed the received data and transmitted them to the flight control center using a special code. The information was processed using a computer. After the stress caused by the takeoff, Belka and Strelka behaved calmly, at first even a little sluggishly. Despite the overload and vibration at first, the dogs ate their specialized food with appetite. The state of weightlessness did not have a significant effect on the circulatory system. The dogs' body temperature did not change throughout the flight. However, after the fourth orbit around the Earth, Belka for some reason became extremely restless, tried to escape from her seat belts and barked. She began to feel sick. Despite this, post-flight tests did not reveal any significant deviations from the norm in Belka. A few hours after launch, it turned out that the ship’s infrared vertical sensor had failed, so a backup solar system was used for pre-landing orientation.

Ejectable container
Belki and Strelki at the Museum of Cosmonautics

On August 20, 1960, at 13:32 Moscow time, on the 18th orbit, a command was given from the Earth to start the descent cycle. The braking propulsion system was turned on, and the ship left orbit. After some time, the descent module successfully landed in a given area (Orsk-Kustanay-Amangeldy triangle) 10 km from the calculated point. The program was completed in full. From the first visual inspection, when specialists arrived at the landing site, it was clear that Belka and Strelka were feeling satisfactorily. Sometimes during training at the training center it happened that the dogs looked worse. After this experiment showed that a safe descent from orbit was possible, a special search and rescue service was immediately created. It also included scientists who prepared Belka and Strelka for the flight, and who knew their individual characteristics well in order to quickly and accurately determine the condition of the dogs at the landing site. During their flight, Belka and Strelka covered a distance of 700 thousand km.

Successful landing of an ejection container
Belki and Strelki

The experiment of the daily orbital flight of Belka and Strelka on the second spacecraft-satellite was a significant contribution to the study and exploration of outer space. The volume of research carried out and the nature of the problems being solved allowed us to draw conclusions about the possibility of a person making an orbital flight around the Earth. During the flight of Belka and Strelka and, according to the results obtained after it, scientists obtained unique scientific data on the influence of space flight factors on the physiological, biochemical, genetic and cytological systems of animals (including mammals) and plants.
For Belka and Strelka after their orbital flight, biochemical studies showed that the daily flight caused them a “stress” type reaction, but on Earth these deviations quickly returned to their original values. It was concluded that this reaction was temporary during the flight. No noticeable changes in metabolism were also found. Scientists were alerted by some features of the physiological state of the dog Belka, which after the fourth orbit became extremely restless, struggled and tried to free itself from the fastening elements. The dog barked, it was clearly visible that she was not feeling well, although her fellow passenger Strelka spent the entire flight calmly. No abnormalities were observed in the dogs' post-flight tests. It was concluded that it is necessary to approach the planning of the upcoming human space flight with caution. Based on this, it was decided to limit the flight of the first man into space to a minimum number of orbits. So Belka actually predetermined the one-orbit flight of the first cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.

Strelka and Belka in the hands of Oleg Gazenko -
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service

Belka and Strelka spent 25 hours in space and returned to Earth as celebrities. The news of Belka and Strelka’s successful flight into space instantly spread throughout the world. The day after the dogs returned from space, a press conference was organized at TASS, in which they were the main characters. The legendary dogs immediately became everyone's favorites.
Doctor of Biological Sciences Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Radkevich, and in 1960 a junior employee of the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, who selected dogs for the experiment and participated in the training of Belka and Strelka, said that when their successful flight into space was officially announced, she and I was traveling with them in a car from the Institute. Stopping at a traffic light, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna and her charges immediately became the object of close attention from passengers in neighboring cars and pedestrians, who began to clap for them in delight. At the TASS building, where a whole crowd of journalists, reporters and just onlookers had gathered, Belka, Strelka and Lyudmila Radkevich were already waiting. While getting out of the car, she accidentally caught on the threshold of the car and fell, holding the dogs tightly in her hands. Soviet and foreign journalists quickly grabbed the woman and pulled her to her feet. The gallant French congratulated Lyudmila Alexandrovna, Belka and Strelka on their second soft landing.

Belka and Strelka in hands
Doctor of Biological Sciences
Lyudmila Alexandrovna Radkevich

Later, books were written about Belka and Strelka, and many documentaries and animated films were made. Commemorative postage stamps with their images were issued. The first most popular search engine (77.05%) in the world, Google, on the occasion of a holiday or anniversary of some event, changes its standard logo for regional domains to a festive one with a specific theme, called “Google Doodles”. On August 19, 2010, the logo was designed in the style of the anniversary of the flight into space of the dogs Belka and Strelka.
The further life of Belka and Strelka was spent in the enclosure of the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine. At the same time, they were taken for display to kindergartens, schools and orphanages. A few months later, Strelka gave birth to offspring. All six puppies were healthy.

Four-legged cosmonaut Strelka
with offspring after the flight

One of them, a girl named Pushinka, was placed in the White House: Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev gave it to the wife of US President John Kennedy, Jacqueline, and their daughter Caroline.

Puppy Fluff - the offspring of a four-legged astronaut
Arrows after the flight.
Photo before shipping to the USA
wife of President D.F. Kennedy (J. Kennedy)
at her request

Belka and Strelka lived to a ripe old age and died a natural death. Currently, stuffed animals of these dogs are in the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow and are still the objects of close attention of visitors, especially children.

Belka and Strelka at the Museum of Cosmonautics

Unlike Belka and Strelka, Laika’s earthly fame came after death. The story of this dog still touches people today. Science fiction writers write stories about Laika being rescued by aliens, rock musicians dedicate songs to her, and write blogs on the Internet on behalf of Laika...
On April 11, 2008, in Moscow, on Petrovsko-Razumovskaya Alley on the territory of the Institute of Military Medicine, where the space experiment was being prepared, a monument to Laika (sculptor Pavel Medvedev) was erected. The two-meter-high monument represents a space rocket turning into a palm on which Laika proudly stands.
After the triumphant flight of Belka and Strelka, black streaks began to appear. On October 26, 1960, a rocket exploded and burned on the launch pad. 92 people died in the fire. And 15 days before this tragedy, a secret decision was made to fly a man into space. The deadline was set for December 1960. Everything was ready for manned space flight. One condition remained to be fulfilled: two ships with dogs must successfully fly into space.
On December 1, 1960, a ship was again sent into orbit with dogs Bee and Mushka on board and other small animals, insects and plants. The flight proceeded normally, but at the final stage, due to the fact that the descent followed a trajectory different from the calculated one, the ship ceased to exist.

Preparing the Bee and the Fly for Flight

Bee and Fly

On December 22, 1960, Zhemchuzhina and Zhulka took their place in the satellite ship. There was an accident. The descent vehicle made an emergency landing in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Rats, insects, and plants died, but the dogs remained alive.

Zhulka - three flights into space

V. B. Malkin with Zhulka and O. G. Gazenko

On March 9, 1961, the four-legged traveler Chernushka and other inhabitants of the cabin launched into space and soon returned safely to earth.

Chernushka at a doctor's appointment

On March 25, 1961, the next ship was launched with animals on board and a cheerful, funny dog ​​Zvezdochka. That's what the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin called her; for some reason he didn't like the nickname Dymka. And she had to complete one revolution and land. The flight ended successfully.

Asterisk, Chernushka, Strelka and Belka

During the entire period of experiments - until the spring of 1961, 29 rockets with animals were launched. 48 dogs took part in the flights, some dogs successfully flew on rockets two, three or even four times. 9 dogs have been in space. However, the experiments did not always end happily: almost twenty dogs died during this time. The dogs died from depressurization of the cabin, failure of the parachute system, and problems in the life support system.
The Voskhod manned spacecraft were initially going to launch as many as seven. After the flights of Voskhod and Voskhod-2 in 1965, preparations began for the launch of Voskhod-3 with a scientific research program lasting 10-15 days. Its launch was scheduled for November 1965. But by that time, the lag behind the ship’s preparation schedule became obvious. Scientific equipment also arrived late. After the death of S.P. Korolev, the scientific part of the expedition program was canceled, and the crews were reorganized. A decision was made: to schedule the flight for the second quarter of 1966 according to the military program, lasting up to 20 days.

Breeze and Coal

To practice the main aspects of ensuring a long-term space flight, a flight of dogs on a modified manned spacecraft was planned. The program for preparing and conducting a 22-day flight of the biosatellite was designed for two years, but the staff of laboratory 29B, headed by Candidate of Medical Sciences Alexander Alekseevich Kiselev, and the sector led by the world’s first medical cosmonaut Boris Borisovich Egorov, completed it in less than a year.

Breeze and Coal on a walk

To carry out the flight, several new techniques had to be developed. In particular, it was decided to feed dogs in space artificially - through a fistula in the stomach. For this purpose, it was necessary to develop special homogenized food for them so that it would enter the stomach in portions. Before the flight, the dogs were operated on: a gastrostomy was performed to remove the fistula, the left carotid artery was brought out into a skin flap (to fix the cuff and measure blood pressure), an electrode was implanted in the area of ​​the carotid sinus and subcutaneous ECG electrodes. The animals had vascular catheters implanted into the venous and arterial beds to administer pharmacological agents and take blood samples, and even had their tail amputated. This unusual measure was prompted by the opinion of life support specialists who considered that the tails interfered with forced ventilation and cleaning of the container. In total, Laboratory 29B prepared 30 dogs for launch on the biosatellite, whose “ground” indicators did not differ from the norm.
On February 22, 1966, in preparation for the Voskhod-3 flight, the Voskhod unmanned spacecraft was launched, which after entering orbit received the name “Cosmos-110”. On board were the dogs Veterok and Ugolek. Moreover, a couple of hours before the start, Coal was called Snowball, but since he was dark in color, he was renamed at the last moment. The ship entered orbit with a high apogee (904 km) to test the effect of radiation belts on the body of animals. Having completed a 22-day flight, on March 16, after the 330th orbit, the descent module successfully landed.

Breeze and Coal after the flight

When the nylon suits were removed from the dogs, the doctors saw that the animals had a hard time surviving the long flight in orbit beyond the internal radiation belts. They have almost no fur left - only bare skin, diaper rash and even bedsores. The dogs were unable to stand and were very weak, both had a strong heartbeat and were constantly thirsty. Doctors had to carry out special rehabilitation procedures, thanks to which Ugolek and Veterok quickly recovered. After some time, their gastric fistulas were removed, they began to eat on their own, and a month later the catheters were removed, and they ran around the territory of the institute, like ordinary yard dogs. Subsequently, they gave birth to healthy offspring and lived in the institute's vivarium until the end of their days.
The dog Veterok - however, his real name is Per - took root under the desk of the one who sent him into space, Andrei Nazin. He went wherever he wanted, but invariably returned home to sleep - under the table.

Breeze and Coal after the flight
biosatellite "Cosmos -110"

Over the years, the dog's teeth began to fall out. The reason was already known - the result of intensive leaching of calcium from the bones. They stuffed the dog with everything! Did not help. Not only bones, but the unfortunate dog soon couldn’t chew the doctor’s sausage. Then the whole laboratory started doing it instead. They chewed sausage - and under the dog's table, day after day, throughout the last three years of Peer's life. And he died of old age. Having lived after the flight for 12 years.
However, in mid-1966, the Voskhod program was closed, and the creation and production of ships was stopped. The manned spacecraft (SC) Voskhod-3, prepared for launch, was never launched. In addition to this, the flight of a female crew planned on subsequent ships of this series with the first spacewalk by a woman in the history of astronautics, and then the launch of a two-seater spacecraft with a medical research program, which included performing a surgical operation in space flight conditions on an experimental animal (rabbit), were also cancelled. . The doctor Yuri Aleksandrovich Senkevich trained under this program, who later became a famous traveler and host of the TV show “Travelers Club”. Also excluded from the plans were a flight to test in open space the cosmonaut's means of transportation and an experiment to create artificial gravity by spinning the Voskhod spacecraft connected by a cable to the 3rd stage of the launch vehicle.
Almost every space crew has their own “living corner”. Amazing experiments have been carried out on board space stations and shuttles: can a spider weave a web in zero gravity, and can bees build honeycombs where fish can swim in a space where there is no difference between up and down?
Catching up and overtaking Laika - this is probably how one can formulate the task facing the American space agency NASA, created by decree of President Eisenhower in the summer of 1958 and immediately announcing a program of manned space flights, called “Project Mercury”. The path to man's orbit had to be paved by his closest relatives - monkeys.
By this point, monkeys had been flying rockets for ten years. The first rhesus monkey - eventually killed - went into the upper atmosphere on June 11, 1948 on a German V-2 ballistic rocket.
It is worth noting that many monkeys died in the name of space exploration, never leaving the Earth. For example, in order to understand what overloads an astronaut can endure when braking, chimpanzees were seated on a “sled” with a jet engine, which was accelerated along the rails to enormous speed, and then stopped in one second - so that the experimental animals were left with a solid mess.
As for space flights, the first “monkey astronaut” survived the flight, which took place on Friday, December 13, 1958, but met its death at the bottom of the Atlantic when the Navy ship was unable to detect the ejection compartment with the animal.
As telemetry showed, a squirrel monkey named Gordo withstood 9 minutes of weightlessness and enormous overloads during takeoff and landing, proving that the human body is also capable of coping with similar tests.
Firstly, only under extreme conditions can one evaluate the effect of weightlessness or, more precisely, microgravity on the body. Using primates, the mechanism of various disorders was clarified and preventive measures were developed for astronauts. Secondly, doctors did not implant electrodes into the astronauts’ structures of interest in the cerebellum of the brain stem or into the muscles of the limbs. The effect of microgravity is associated with weight loss; as a result, signals entering the brain about the position of the body and the state of organs are distorted. Experimentation is needed to counteract this. Thirdly, in microgravity conditions, a change in intracerebral blood circulation occurs due to the movement of body fluids to the upper half of the body. For astronauts, measures to prevent this unpleasant and traumatic process are important.
Special flight suits with stretchable straps were made for the monkeys to provide the monkeys with the greatest possible freedom of movement. The “crew” had to work in orbit for several hours a day, receiving their favorite juice as a reward. In particular, they had to recognize objects using their eyes, head, hand, and respond to a signal by pressing a special pedal with their foot as quickly as possible. Thus, specialists obtained data on the peculiarities of the “behavior” of the vestibular system in weightlessness, i.e., on the causes of disturbances in the perception of space and the construction of movement.
Particular attention during the flight was paid to the study of metabolism - the supply of oxygen to one or another part of the body and to the cerebral cortex. In addition to two male rhesus macaques, the flight included newts, darkling beetles, fruit flies, snails, higher and lower plants.
In the process of preparing for flights, scientists found that monkeys for space flight master the task in just 2 months and are actually superior to humans in some ways. For example, in reaction speed. It took the monkey 19 minutes to complete the “target extinguishing” exercise. And a person has an hour to complete the same task!
Six months after Gordo's flight, the monkeys were returned alive from space. On board the Jupiter rocket, launched from Cape Canaveral on May 29, 1959 to an altitude of 500 kilometers, there were two astronauts - Baker the squirrel monkey and Able the rhesus monkey. By the way, Able replaced the original candidate, a rhesus monkey from India, shortly before the start. NASA decided that it was politically incorrect to experiment on a sacred animal, and a Native American woman went into space.

Baker's squirrel monkey wrapped in rubber
rubber, bound and encapsulated in
time for training exercises for space flight

Baker, a tiny squirrel monkey, weighing only half a kilo, was packed like a mummy in what looked like a large thermos - a container made of aluminum and fiberglass. The three-kilogram Able was strapped to a couch molded to the shape of her body, but was not completely immobilized: during the flight, she had to press a telegraph key when a red light came on in the cockpit. Thus, scientists wanted to test whether a living creature was able to apply the skills learned on Earth in space conditions. However, no signals were received - either the equipment failed, or Able did not care. The monkeys survived forces of 38 times normal gravity and weightlessness for 9 minutes during their historic flight.

The first two monkeys to survive the journey
into space, presented at a press conference
NASA in 1959. Able (left) -
3 kg rhesus monkey, and Baker -
311 gram squirrel monkey from Peru,
experienced forces 38 times greater than normal
gravity and weightlessness for 9
minutes during its historic flight

Able died 4 days after returning to Earth - her heart failed under the influence of anesthesia, which was sprayed in the cage before removing the electrode sensors implanted under the skin. Baker, a 311-gram squirrel monkey from Peru was operated on without anesthesia. She outlived her space partner by a quarter of a century and spent the second half of her life at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, where she lived in a separate cage with a husband named Big George, until 1984, lavished with press attention.
Ham is the first chimpanzee in space at Cape Canaveral, Florida. In the summer of 1959, seven NASA astronauts began preparing for a suborbital flight on the Mercury spacecraft. Among them was test pilot Alan Shepard, who later became the first American in space. Around the same time, at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, a group of chimpanzees brought from Africa began to prepare for space flight. Among them was a three-year-old male caught in the forests of Cameroon, number 65, who went down in history under the name Ham. Ham had to test the hard way whether Shepard could fly into space and return alive.

The launch into orbit of a chimpanzee named Ham, whose
the journey lasted 16 minutes 59 seconds,
took place in January 1961

On January 31, 1961, from the American cosmodrome, a launch vehicle launched the Mercury -2 capsule into a suborbital trajectory, to an altitude of 250 kilometers, the flight lasted about 16 minutes. The ship's passenger was the chimpanzee Ham. Doctors argued that human life could not be risked without testing the effects of space flight on animals.
Before the flight, Ham was taught to move (right or left) a lever in response to a light signal. For correctly following the command, he was rewarded with banana balls flowing through a chute into his mouth. If the chimpanzee made a mistake, he was given a light electric shock (on his paw). The culmination of years of research, the efforts of hundreds of engineers and the expenditure of millions of dollars, banana balls and electric shocks were designed to control a crazy "slot machine" transported into space.
The flight into space turned out to be more difficult than planned. They say that technology did everything to kill the first American astronaut. The launch vehicle ran out of fuel 5 seconds ahead of schedule, the control system sensed “something was wrong”; the emergency rescue system immediately worked - and the ship was “blown away” from the rocket (that is, it was sent much higher and faster than expected). Poor Ham experienced twice as much overload as expected. The on-board equipment failed, and Ham knocked on all the levers. Perhaps he followed the commands correctly, but received electric shocks rather than banana balls. This chimpanzee survived both the flight itself and the landing, when his capsule almost sank in the ocean.

After his short trip to
Ham's orbit landed in the Atlantic
the ocean, and he and the capsule were lifted
rescue boat

Having flown 122 miles beyond the calculated point, the device descended with crushing braking. The jerk of the parachute was terrifying. Then the capsule, which hit the surface of the ocean with a deafening sound, began to fill with water, and Ham became seasick. A rescue helicopter lifted the capsule, which was so flooded that rescuers lifted the nearly drowned, muttering and gasping chimpanzee into their arms.
When it was decided to send a chimpanzee into orbit as a dress rehearsal for John Glenn's flight, the choice fell on a monkey named Enos, which means "man" in Hebrew.

Enos with his trainer

“This chimpanzee, which flies in space, took off at 10 hours and 8 minutes. He said everything was fine, everything was working,” President Kennedy informed reporters on November 29, 1961.
Enos spent more than three hours in orbit, making two orbits around the Earth. During the flight, Enos, like Ham, had to press buttons, and although he did everything correctly, he received many electric shocks to his heels due to a malfunction in the automation.
Enos did not live even a year after the flight. As pathologists concluded, death was caused by bacterial dysentery and had nothing to do with space travel. Ham died at age 26 at the North Carolina Zoo. His remains rest on the grounds of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Enos prepares to be placed in the capsule
ship Mercury Atlas 5

The French were the third in the world to launch an artificial Earth satellite. Less known is the fact that France, in addition, distinguished itself with its own program of biomedical experiments with a unique selection of experimental animals. After the end of World War II, France, one of the victorious powers, did not remain aloof from the new “rocket race” that had begun. But, unlike the USA and the USSR, which widely used German experience in practical rocket science, it had to rely mainly on its own strength.
In 1946, by decision of the Directorate for the Development and Production of Armaments (Direction des etudes et fabrications d'armement - DEFA), the military Laboratory of Ballistic and Aerodynamic Research (Laboratoire de recherches balistiques et aerodynamiques, LRBA) was founded in the city of Vernay. Twenty-eight German specialists -rocketmen were transported to the French occupation zone, where a "Research Bureau Emmen-dingen" (Bureau d" Etudes d "Emmen-dingen) to help LRBA master German experience in designing large ballistic missiles.
In March 1949, “Project 4213” began - the development of a simple and, if possible, economical liquid-fuel rocket, which was later named Veronique (“Veronique”). The name is a compound word "designed"from the combination of part of the name of the city where the rocket was developed - VERnon, and the word "electronics" - electrONIQUE. The first sample of this rocket flew on August 2, 1950, reaching a height of as much as 3 (three!) meters. But trouble has begun. The persistent implementation of this program subsequently made it possible to carry out more than 80 launches of five different modifications of the new rocket.
The French program of biomedical experiments started in 1959. It was developed and carried out by the Research Center for Aerospace Medicine (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches de Medecine Aerospatiale - CERMA) under the leadership of Professor Robert Grandpierre. Originally planned conducting 17 suborbital flights from 1961 to 1964. At the second stage, it was planned to conduct medical and biological experiments on board an artificial Earth satellite in 1965. However, for financial and political reasons, the program was only partially implemented, conducting only seven experiments on geophysical rockets. All flights were carried out from the Hammagir test site (Hatmaguir), located in Algeria, 130 km southwest of the city of Bechar on a rocky plateau in the Sahara Desert.
For the first five flights of this program, a modification of the Veronique AGI was used, developed in France for the International Geophysical Year (the French abbreviation AGI is Annex Geophysique Internationale). It was decided to study the vigilance of a mammal under conditions of weightlessness by recording the activity of the cerebral cortex. To do this, it was necessary to fix the electrodes on the animal so that the signals could be read at any time. The first surgical interventions to insert silver-nickel electrodes into the brains of rats were very lengthy. They lasted about 10 hours! The mortality rate was extremely high. Little by little, technology improved, the duration of operations shortened, and the percentage of surviving rats increased. The period during which the prepared rodent could subsequently be used in experiments was limited to 3–6 months due to progressive polarization of the intracranial electrodes, aging of the rodent, and cranial necrosis caused by the adhesive securing the connector to the skull. For initial tests in Paris, 47 white Wistar rats were selected.
The rat was held in an extended position in the cabin in a container using a special vest. The vest was made of linen fabric. Nylon, originally chosen for these purposes, was quickly abandoned due to the electrostatic interference it caused.
The first flight, which took place in 1961, was to determine the direction and methods of further research. A lot depended on its successful implementation.
The launch was originally scheduled for February 20, but took place only on the 22nd. The usual worries and worries before the launch intensified after the Veronique AGI 30 rocket, the same type as the Veronique AGI 24 used to fly the animal, exploded during a previous launch for another scientific program on February 18. The first rat placed in the container managed to gnaw through a bundle of cables with its teeth, through which information was transmitted. The “disgraced” animal was subsequently replaced by one of 10 reserves brought from Paris to Hammagir.
Although the Veronique engine worked for the required 45 seconds, due to its uneven thrust, the maximum lift altitude was only 110 km - half of the planned one. And at the stage of ballistic flight, the head of the rocket was not stabilized and flew, rotating chaotically. Due to the angular accelerations caused by such rotation, the period during which the animal was supposed to be in weightlessness turned out to be “blurred”, and it was not possible to obtain a state of complete “zero gravity”. The warhead sank to the ground after 8 minutes 10 seconds. The helicopter search crew found and successfully evacuated the rat 40 minutes after takeoff. The next day, February 23, she was brought to Paris, where the journalists who met gave the animal, known only under the number RC 139, the nickname “Hector”(Hector). Six months after his space flight, Hector was euthanized in order to study the possible effects of weightlessness on the implanted electrodes.
At the next stage, they decided to carry out a paired launch with an interval of three days, which, according to the scientists, was supposed to provide the possibility of parallel observations of two animals. Due to the almost simultaneous flight, the rats RC 271 and RC 268 were given the names “Castor” and “Pollux” even before the launch - in honor of the brightest stars of the constellation Gemini.
The first launch of Veronique AGI 37 took place on October 15, 1962. Due to wind and technical reasons, the rocket began its ascent a little later than planned. The maximum altitude was 120 km. During the ballistic flight stage, the state of weightlessness lasted 6 minutes. Reception of telemetric information was carried out until the connection was interrupted at the 175th second. After completing the flight, the head of the rocket landed at a distance of 110 km from the launch site, which was more than twice as large as expected. Due to the loss of VHF communication with the helicopter sent to search (the connection was lost precisely due to the remoteness of the search area), the warhead was discovered only 1 hour 15 minutes after launch. During this time, the temperature in the container in which Castor was upside down rose to 40° C, and the animal died from overheating.
In the first half of the 1960s, space experiments on living beings ceased to be the prerogative of the USSR and the USA: in 1963, the French sent the cat Felicette into space with electrodes implanted in the brain, and three years later the Chinese launched rockets with dogs on board.
Since the mid-1970s, entire “Noah’s arks” have flown into space on the Kosmos (Bion) satellites as part of unprecedented Soviet-American cooperation. However, their passengers were no longer treated as “pioneers of space routes”, but as nameless experimental creatures on whom the human body’s reaction to a longer stay in conditions of weightlessness and cosmic radiation was tested.
Radiation risk is considered one of the most significant in interplanetary travel. In preparation for a flight to Mars, Russia is going to irradiate monkeys in order to study the long-term effects of cosmic radiation on them. And in the United States, scientists are planning to launch mice into orbit in a satellite, where for five weeks they will be subject to the gravitational force of the Red Planet - three times less than that of Earth. So the next breakthrough in space exploration will not happen without animals.
Over the entire period of space exploration, thousands of biological objects have been in low-Earth orbit. In addition to dogs, these are mice, rats, monkeys, snails, newts, fish, insects and microorganisms. Only on 11 Bion satellites 12 monkeys and 212 rats made space travel.
Frogs were the first vertebrate animals to travel into space. Most often, special fruit flies—drosophila, snails, and turtles—are launched on biosatellites (satellites on which animals fly).
As part of the “USSR lunar program,” flight design tests of the 7K-L1 spacecraft included studying how overloads during return at the second escape velocity and the radiation situation on the lunar route would affect living organisms. On the advice of scientists from the Academy of Sciences, they decided to send Central Asian steppe tortoises into space for a “biological indication” of the route: they do not require a large supply of oxygen, they can eat nothing for a week and a half and remain in a lethargic sleep for a long time. The turtles were placed in special cases, where they were practically deprived of mobility. The first fairly successful launch of spacecraft 7K-L1 No. 9 was carried out on September 15, 1968. On board the spacecraft, named in the press “Zond-5”, there were living objects: turtles, fruit flies, beetles, tradescantia with buds, Hela cells in culture, seeds of higher plants - wheat, pine, barley, chlorella algae on various nutrient media, different types of lysogenic bacteria, etc.
On September 21, 1968, the Zonda-5 descent module entered the Earth's atmosphere along a ballistic trajectory and splashed down in the Indian Ocean. When the sailors from the Soviet ship were preparing the descent module for lifting onto the deck, they heard something rustling inside the device, and then the sound of an impact followed. Again there was a rustling sound and again a blow... They assumed that the device was obviously equipped with a self-liquidator. Work was suspended until the scientists working with Zond 5 were contacted. From them, the sailors learned that the turtles, which were placed as experimental animals in the testing compartment, were rustling. The descent module was lifted aboard the Soviet expeditionary oceanographic vessel Vasily Golovin and on October 3, 1968, delivered to Bombay, from where it was sent by plane to Moscow. The turtles were removed from the descent module already in Moscow, in the TsKBEM workshop, and were handed over to scientists. The flight was tolerated by the turtles normally, but according to some reports, one of them, due to an overload that reached 20 units upon landing, had his eyes pop out of his socket.

Inspection of turtles - the first animals to fly around
The moon in the Zond-5 ship. Participate
V. D. Blagoe, Yu. P. Semenov, V. S. Remenny,
A. G. Reshetin, E. V. Shabarov, ...

After returning to Earth, the turtles were active - they moved a lot and ate with appetite. During the experiment, they lost about 10% in weight. Blood tests did not reveal any significant differences in these animals compared to controls. “Probe -5” was the first in the world to fly around the Moon and, 7 days after launch, returned to Earth, entering the atmosphere at the second escape velocity.
The USSR also launched turtles into orbital flights aboard the unmanned spacecraft Soyuz-20 on November 17, 1975 (during which a 90-day record for animals in space was set) and aboard the Salyut-5 orbital station on June 22, 1976 .
In the last 20 years, since the beginning of the construction of the heavy space stations "Mir" and the ISS (International Space Station), animals have been living in space along with the astronauts on board. At the Mir station, the biological module “Nature”, specially created for laboratory experiments with animals and plants, operated for more than 10 years.
Here the animals not only lived, but also successfully reproduced. Several generations of birds were bred in special incubators.
On March 22, 1990, a quail broke the shell of a motley gray-brown egg in a special space incubator and became the first living creature to be born in space. It was a sensation!
A container with 48 quail eggs went with the cargo ship to the Mir orbital station, which the astronauts carefully placed in the space “nest”. For comparison, a control group of eggs were also in the incubator at the same time. There were many doubts about the possibility of the correct course of embryonic and post-embryonic development of a living being in conditions of weightlessness. After all, it is well known that the egg is not indifferent to gravity. The wait was tense, but exactly on the 17th day the first spotted egg burst in orbit. A new space inhabitant weighing only 6 grams pecked at the shell. To the delight of biologists, the same thing happened in the control incubator on Earth. After the first chicken, a second, a third appeared... They were healthy, nimble, they responded well to sound and light, and had a pecking reflex.
However, it is not enough to be born in space; you need to adapt to its harsh conditions. Alas... The quails were unable to adapt to weightlessness. They flew chaotically inside the cabin like fluff, unable to catch on to the bars. Due to the lack of fixation of the body in space, they were unable to feed on their own and subsequently died. However, 3 chicks returned to Earth, having also survived the flight back. But, according to biologists, this experiment proved the main thing - weightlessness did not turn out to be an insurmountable obstacle to the development of the organism.
The ultimate goal of experiments with Japanese quails in zero gravity is to create a life support system for spacecraft crews during ultra-long interplanetary space flights. During such flights, a person will have to reproduce the earthly environment familiar to him: grow plants, raise small domestic animals. Domesticated Japanese quails have become one of the links in the artificial space ecosystem.
12 gerbil mice, 20 vine snails, five gecko lizards and cockroaches that traveled into space on the Photon biosatellite and returned to Earth on September 26, 2005, were euthanized so that specialists could study their organs for the benefit of science.
A container of bacteria was sent into space on the Atlantis shuttle in 2006.
On February 3, 2010, two turtles made a successful suborbital flight on a rocket launched by Iran.
It is especially interesting to study plants grown in space. In conditions of weightlessness, fruits on trees are several times larger than those on earth. Space plants are grown in special orbital greenhouses. They are distinguished by high yields and resistance to various diseases. In addition, crops harvested in space do not spoil for a long time, because they are stored in special vacuum chambers that prevent rotting.
In memory of the animals who gave their lives in the name of science, a granite column was erected in front of the Paris Society for the Protection of Dogs in 1958. Its top is crowned by a skyward satellite, from which the pretty stone face of Laika, the first space traveler, peeks out.

Monument to Laika on site
Institute of Military Medicine

Our country also immortalized the first “cosmonaut” dog - in 1997, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building of the laboratory of the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, where Laika was being prepared for flight. Monument to another dog - "discoverer"» Zvezdochka was opened in Izhevsk in March 2006, 45 years after its flight.

Monument to the dog-astronaut Zvezdochka
in Izhevsk

The results of experiments with animals and plants currently being carried out on board orbital stations will be useful for future interplanetary expeditions. On a modern spacecraft, it takes almost six months to fly to Mars, the closest planet to us, and the same amount of time back. All this time, the astronauts must eat something. Of course, they will have a lot of canned and dried foods, but the human body always needs fresh vegetables and fruits. These fruits and vegetables will be grown in space greenhouses.
It is not yet known for sure whether there is life on other planets. However, water, which is absolutely necessary for living beings, is found on many planets: on Mars, Io and Europa

The first animals to reach the Moon and fly around the moon were turtles. This happened in 1968. Representatives of a rather rare genus were chosen for the space flight - Asian steppe. They set out on the trip on the USSR Zond-5 drone, which was based on the famous Soyuz spacecraft.

The fact that turtles were sent into space is not surprising. Turtles need very little oxygen to survive. In addition, they are very unpretentious - they can go without eating or drinking for a long time. The passengers spent almost the entire flight in lethargic sleep.

To make the unusual travelers not bored, they were joined by already experienced astronauts - Drosophila flies, plants, seeds of barley, wheat, pine and several types of bacteria. By the way, it was fruit flies that were the first living creatures to go into space 21 years earlier.

This whole cheerful company not only flew around the Earth’s satellite, but also came as close as possible to it. And American astronauts visited the Moon only a few months later, taking all the glory for themselves.

The flight was successful

The unusual crew of astronauts were placed in large capsules, where a ventilation system was installed and some food was stored.

So, on September 15, the aircraft took off from the cosmodrome. Three days later, the turtles flew around the moon at a very close distance from its surface for that time - only 1960 km.

And three days later - on September 21 - the spacecraft splashed down in the Indian Ocean. The original plan to land near Baikonur in Kazakhstan was impossible to carry out due to an emergency situation. Thus the dangerous journey took a little less than a week.

Consequences of the trip

Only a few weeks later the device was delivered to Moscow, where TsKBEM scientists successfully discovered it. The turtles lost only 10% of their original weight, but, unfortunately, one of them lost an eye (presumably this happened during landing). Apparently, the overload took its toll. Otherwise, the health of the travelers was not affected.

After returning, the unusual cosmonauts adapted very quickly and behaved very actively - they ate a lot, moved more than usual, and were friendly. The experiment was considered successful. Unfortunately, the names of these two heroines remain unknown.

The Zond-5 passengers had many followers: the turtles went into space more than once, the flights ended in different ways. However, it was these two travelers who went down in history, as they were the first living creatures to fly around the Moon.

The whole world knows the first person to see our planet from space. But long before him, the first animals in space saw all the beauty of the earth. Who are they and what is their fate? Space discoverers, the first animals to experience space weightlessness and donate their lives to science and humanity, are the topic of this article.

Who gets hired as an astronaut?

Today, bacteria and algae, fruit flies and cockroaches, turtles and newts, hamsters and rats, cats, dogs and, of course, monkeys have been in space. And this is not a complete list of those animals that have flown into space. More recently, in 1990, a quail chick hatched from an egg on the Mir space station, the first born in space. And in 2007, during the launch of the Discovery shuttle, a bat involuntarily became an astronaut, clinging to the tank of the spacecraft. After the launch, she did not fly away, and her fate is tragic and sad. The picture shows where the poor thing was stuck.

Flies in space

Oddly enough, the first animal launched into space was not the world famous Soviet mongrels Belka and Strelka. They were ordinary fruit flies (drosophila), which successfully traveled to an altitude of more than 109 kilometers inside a captured V-2 rocket in 1947. The launch of the German landmine was carried out by the Americans. Flies passed the baton of space exploration to mammals.

America is betting on monkeys

US research programs continued their work, choosing monkeys as the object of research on the viability of animals in space. Rhesus monkey Albert I, named after Einstein, went into space on June 11, 1948, launched from the White Sands Cosmodrome. Albert I did not reach space - he suffocated and could not bear the overload.

The second Albert, also a rhesus monkey, performed a suborbital flight at an altitude of 134 kilometers (1949), but crashed upon landing: the parachute system failed. The launches the following year of Albert III (the rocket exploded at an altitude of 10 km) and Albert IV (the parachute system failed) also turned out to be tragic. Albert V flew the geophysical Aerobee in 1951, but the parachute failed again. Only Albert VI was lucky to return and survive in September 1951. Yorick the rhesus monkey, the name of the fifth Albert astronaut, was technically the first monkey to return alive from space travel.

American Hero Ham

But the macaque Yorick did not become a hero, he became the chimpanzee Ham (named in honor of Ernest Hemingway) - a three-year-old male brought from the forests of Cameroon, who had the number 65. In the Mercury-2 capsule on January 31, 1961, he made a 16-minute flight at altitude 250 kilometers and returned alive. But it's not that simple. The motto of Ham's flight was "the technology did everything to kill the chimpanzee, but he survived."

Ham was taught to carry out commands, for which he was given an electric shock if performed incorrectly. During the flight, the equipment malfunctioned, and the poor chimpanzee received electric shocks for all the answers. In addition, during landing the device flew 122 miles further than it was calculated and fell into the ocean. The overload when the parachute deployed was incredible, and the capsule that hit the water immediately began to flood. When the rescue helicopter picked up the capsule, Ham was taken out, almost choked, but still alive. He conquered space and lived 26 long years of his life, favored by the attention of the Americans.

It was not the first animal in space and it will not be the last. After him, another chimpanzee, Enos (12/29/1961), made his flight, who spent almost three hours in space and returned safely to Earth.

Felix or Felicette?

French space programs have chosen cats to study brain activity in space. About thirty stray cats were caught on the streets of Paris and began to be prepared for flight. They had sensors implanted into their heads and electrodes into their brains, which recorded brain impulses. And on October 18, 1963, news spread around the world - the black and white cat Felix became the first animal in space. France rejoiced. But it turned out that Felix did not fly into space - he managed to escape right before the launch. Instead, the tabby cat Felicette spent several minutes in space at an altitude of more than 100 kilometers and returned alive. She lived a long life after the flight and even gave birth to kittens.

Soviet researchers worked with dogs as beings more attuned to working with humans. Most people are sure that the first animals in space were Belka and Strelka. History is silent about the tragic fate of Laika - indeed the first mongrel to make four orbits around the Earth's orbit.

Before the triumph of Belka and Strelka, there was also Lisichka, the favorite of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who flew into space several times and died tragically in February 1955. And after their triumph there were Bee and Mushka (12/01/1960), Zhemchuzhina and Zhulka (12/22/1960), Chernushka (03/09/1961) and Dymka, which Yuri Gagarin renamed Zvezdochka (03/25/1961).

In the ten years since 1951, the Soviet Union carried out 29 suborbital launches, in which 41 dogs participated. Animals rose into space to heights from 100 to 450 kilometers.

The shaggiest, loneliest and most unhappy dog ​​in the world

This is what Laika was called in the American press in November 1957. The rocket with the mongrel Laika on board launched on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Great October Revolution - November 3. This propaganda campaign was aimed at demonstrating the power of the Soviet cosmonautics. But the world did not know that Laika had a one-way ticket; she was not going to be returned to Earth. She died of overheating after four orbits, but for several more days the Soviet media broadcast information about the dog’s excellent health. Until the moment when the connection with the satellite was suddenly “lost.” In fact, the satellite with the dead dog flew in orbit until mid-April 1958, after which it burned up in the atmosphere. Laika’s story still inspires science fiction writers to write novels about her lucky rescue by aliens, and she even has a blog on the Internet. In 2008, the memory of the quiet and obedient dog, which became a symbol of the beginning of the era of space exploration, was honored in Russia. On the territory of the Institute of Military Medicine in Moscow, on Cosmonautics Day, a monument was unveiled, where the proud Laika stands on a human palm.

Triumphant mongrels

Belka and Strelka are two world famous mongrels. The first animals in space to make an orbital flight on the prototype of Gagarin's Vostok. But on their triumphant flight on August 19, 1960, they set off in friendly company with 28 mice, 2 rats, fruit flies, Tradescantia and chlorella, plant seeds, fungi and microbes. The ship circled the Earth 17 times, and on August 20 the capsule landed almost at the calculated point. The flight program was completed in full. After 25 hours in space, Belka and Strelka became famous. After some time, Strelka gave birth to six healthy puppies and one of them - the girl Pushinka - was presented by Nikita Khrushchev to Jacqueline Kennedy, the wife of the then President of America.

Let's remember them like this

Both dogs lived long and happy lives, and their stuffed animals are the pride of the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics (Moscow). Many books have been written about them, films have been made, they are heroes of cartoons and comics. On August 19, the global search engine Google puts up a logo designed in honor of the first animals in space, Belka and Strelka. Since 1958, on the territory of the Paris Society for the Protection of Dogs there has been a granite column, on top of which there is a satellite with a dog’s face. In the Homo Sapiens Museum (Crete) there is a monument to Belka, Strelka and Laika. In Los Angeles, at the Museum of Contemporary Technology, there is also a monument to the dogs who pioneered space.

Lunar travelers

On board the Zond-5 satellite, launched on September 15, 1968, several Central Asian steppe tortoises flew around the Moon. On September 21, the descent capsule landed in the Indian Ocean. The sailors who took out the capsule clearly heard the rustling of the travelers. They withstood the overloads of the second escape velocity and radiation exposure on the lunar route and became the first animals to orbit the Moon.

Is the era of animal astronauts over?

In the 70s of the last century, the Soviet-American Bion program was launched, when entire “Noah’s arks” were sent into space on the Cosmos satellites. 11 satellites were made into astronauts by 12 rhesus monkeys and 212 laboratory rats. Today, when the world is preparing for flights to Mars, the problem of radiation risk, which is considered the most dangerous during interplanetary flights, is especially relevant. Russia plans to study the long-term effects of radiation in space using specially trained monkeys. And in America, a project is being prepared to launch mice into space, where they will be under a gravitational force equal to that of Mars for three weeks. We definitely cannot do without helpers in the exploration of outer space.

Neighbors on the International Space Station

The ISS and the Mir station have biological modules where living organisms are constantly located. In 1990, at the Mir station, out of 48 quail eggs, only one quail hatched. He was the first to be born in space, and his brothers followed him. But being born is not enough, what is important is surviving. Unfortunately, most of the chicks were unable to feed and stabilize their bodies in zero gravity. However, three chicks not only survived, but also survived the flight to Earth.

Now you know the answer to the question of which living creature was the first to fly into space. Our smaller friends have paved a safe path into outer space, sometimes at the cost of their lives. And we humans are grateful to the first animals in space for this. Remembering these little heroes, we do not forget about them today, this is the duty of humanity, which wants to remain humane.