60 years on, scientist remembers training Laika the dog
MOSCOW: “I asked her to forgive us and I even cried as I stroked her for the last time,” said 90-year-old Russian biologist Adilya Kotovskaya, recalling the day she bid farewell to her charge Laika.
The former street dog was about to make history as the first living creature to orbit the earth, blasting off on a one-way journey.
The Soviet Union sent Laika up to space in a satellite on November 3, 1957 -- sixty years ago. It followed the first ever Sputnik satellite launch earlier that year.
But things did not go exactly to plan and the dog was only able to survive for a few hours, flying around the Earth nine times. The satellite carrying her burnt up in the atmosphere five months later, on April 14, 1958 . “Those nine orbits of Earth made Laika the world’s first cosmonaut -- sacrificed for the sake of the success of future space missions,” said Kotovskaya.
For Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Laika’s voyage was a space feat to discomfit the US. In a well-timed propaganda effort, it fell just before the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Laika was a mongrel dog aged around three who weighed 6 kg. “(We chose) strays because they are more resourceful and less demanding,” Kotovskaya said.
For publicity reasons, the dogs also had to be photogenic and they were given memorable names.
Laika’s name derives from the Russian word for “bark”. She was chosen out of six candidates for her resourceful yet docile nature.