Dogs in space: Russia’s canine cosmonauts
Before mankind made its giant leap into outer space, a plucky band of stray dogs took the first small steps that paved the way. In an extract from a new book, Richard Hollingham tells their story
On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a 27-year-old fighter pilot, became the first man to see Earth from space. “It’s beautiful, what beauty!” he exclaimed. Although Gagarin was the first to describe the experience of orbiting the planet, he wasn’t the first to make that journey, nor was he the first to fly in the Soviet Union’s new Vostok space capsule.
Over the previous nine months, ten dogs had attempted the same trip. Only six had made it back alive. These animals were among the final pioneers of a 20-year Soviet space dog programme. Even today, the canine cosmonaut Laika is as famous as Gagarin or the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova – maybe more so.
Before the giant leap for mankind, the small steps on both sides of the international space race were made by animals. A few weeks before Gagarin’s flight, Nasa scientists strapped a chimp called Ham into an experimental Mercury capsule. After a 15-minute flight, the craft splashed down in the ocean and scientists opened the hatch. Ham seemed to be smiling – though primate experts later described the look on his face as one of utter terror. Dogs, the Soviets found, proved much more amenable to being strapped into rockets.
There was no elaborate space-dog breeding programme. In the summer of 1950, biologists from the Moscow Aviation Institute spent their evenings driving around looking for strays, of which there were thousands on the streets of the Russian capital. They had a specific list of requirements. The dogs needed to weigh less than 7kg and be small enough to fit into the nose cone of a rocket. They had to be passive, friendly, intelligent and light in colour so they would show up easily on film cameras. Females were preferred as they could urinate without cocking their legs.
Whenever the scientists spotted a potential stray, they jumped out of their cars with sausage meat in hand. Anyone witnessing the strange scenes would have been wise to keep quiet. The scientists took dozens of captured animals to a requisitioned mansion in a Moscow suburb for training. Fitted with hand-sewn flight suits, the small dogs were strapped to vibrating tables and subjected to increasing levels of aircraft noise. They were placed in centrifuges – usually used to train fighter pilots – and spun at up to ten times the force of gravity. They were locked in confined spaces to get them used to space capsules, and in low-pressure chambers to see how their bodies would cope with altitude.
As well as taking X-rays and regular cardiograms, vets operated on the animals to realign the main artery in their necks so it was closer to the skin. This would make it easier for them to monitor the dogs’ pulse rates during flight. The dogs were given rewards for good behaviour, two meals a day and plenty of exercise. Many scientists took the animals home at the weekends to meet their families or play with their children.
In the early hours of 22 July 1951, the first two dogs were ready for blast-off. Tsygan (“Gypsy”) and Dezik, probably terrier crosses with maybe a bit of husky, were strapped onto individual stretchers and loaded, side by side, into a sealed compartment at the top of a cigar-shaped experimental rocket. The rocket escaped the atmosphere, reaching a height of 68 miles, before the dogs’ compartment separated and fell back to Earth. Tsygan and Dezik had become the highest living creatures. When the team recovered the space capsule, the dogs were not only alive, but seemed to be no worse for wear. A few days later, however, on 29 July, Dezik flew a second mission and was killed when the parachute on her compartment failed to open. Tsygan was retired from the programme and lived out his life for another ten years at the home of a space scientist.
“Scientists from the Moscow Aviation Institute
spent their evenings driving around the Russian capital looking for suitable stray dogs”
On 4 October 1957, Sergei Korolev, the Soviets’ lead rocket engineer, launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, sending the US into a frenzy. As America struggled to get even a pineapple-sized satellite off the ground, the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, demanded another spectacle. On 3 November, Sputnik 2 blasted off from the new Baikonur Cosmodrome and accelerated into orbit. With it, in a padded and windowless compartment fitted with new air-conditioning and feeding systems, and a vacuum cup for removing waste, rode Laika, the first creature to orbit the Earth.
Laika (“Barker”) was another Moscow stray – probably also part husky, part terrier. She was affectionate and patient, with dark expressive eyes. But for all the complexity of the new space capsule, Korolev didn’t have the technology to get it safely back to Earth. Laika would provide valuable data on the effects of weightlessness, but she wouldn’t be returning. Within minutes of the spacecraft reaching orbit, the living compartment began to overheat. The cooling fans couldn’t
cope with the extreme heat of the unshielded Sun. It is now certain that Laika died after about two hours, from panic and heat exhaustion. At the time, no one in the Soviet Union or elsewhere – except those working directly on the mission – knew the truth. For days after the rocket reached orbit, Soviet media declared that Laika was alive and well and enjoying her mission.
Laika became a proletariat heroine, commemorated in books, and on stamps and postcards. When her death was eventually revealed, she was presented as though she had known she was dying for an important cause: helping her masters conquer outer space.
The local hysteria over Laika was nothing compared with what would come the way of two more space dogs, Belka and Strelka (below), three years later. Suborbital flights continued after Laika’s mission, but orbital flights were put on hold until Korolev could perfect a means of bringing animals back alive. Sputnik 5 was the second attempt to send dogs into orbit and return them safely to Earth. The first attempt saw the rocket explode after launch, killing its two passengers, Bars (“Panther”) and Lisichka (“Little Fox”). Korolev had taken a shine to ginger-coloured Little Fox and was visibly upset, but, unlike with US mission failures, there was no publicity.
Belka (“Squirrel”) and Strelka (“Little Arrow”) were launched alongside two rats, 40 mice, a selection of insects, and cultures of microbes and seeds on Korolev’s powerful new rocket – a prototype for the first manned space flight. After more than 24 hours and 18 orbits, 200 miles above the Earth, Belka and Strelka floated back to Earth under parachutes, completely unharmed, wagging their tails to greet their masters.
“In a land that shunned the trappings of celebrity, space dogs were superstars – with all
the mass-produced memorabilia to match”
It was another propaganda coup for the Soviet Union, the little dogs becoming instant celebrities as they were touted before the world’s media. As the victory car carrying Belka and Strelka made its way through Moscow, people in neighbouring vehicles and along the roadside applauded and congratulated them. The dogs were introduced to VIPs and appeared with their handlers on television chat shows.
Laika souvenirs had been popular, but Belka and Strelka took the commemorative space-dog business to a new level. In a land that officially shunned the trappings of glamour and celebrity, the dogs were superstars, with all the mass-produced memorabilia to match. They were portrayed smiling in spacesuits, peering out of rocket portholes or driving side by side in stylised spaceships, whizzing around among the stars. There were figurines, animations, books and stories.
Korolev now planned to attempt the same feat with a human, if the Americans didn’t beat him to it. No one ever knew about Bars and Lisichka, or the subsequent deaths, in the months leading up to Gagarin’s flight, of space dogs Pchyolka
(“Little Bee”) and Mushka (“Little Fly”).
Khru Khrushchev had a lot to boast about when when, at the Vienna summit in June 1961, he fir first met America’s recently elected presid president, John F. Kennedy. (America wouldn’ wouldn’t get its own astronaut, John Glenn, into orbit until the following February.) Accounts of the conference suggest the summit di didn’t go well. Both leaders were wary of each other, but during dinner, the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, turned to the subject of space dogs. By now Strelka had given birth to a healthy litter of puppies. Jackie suggested Khrushchev send her one. A few weeks later, the White House received a special delivery from the Soviet embassy: a puppy with a Russian passport.
The FBI combed meticulously through the fur of the tiny dog, checking it for surveillance bugs. But space puppy Pushinka (“Fluffy”) was allowed to stay – although the president himself had to avoid the dog, because it made him sneeze and come out in a rash. When the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to kick-start a third world war in October 1962, having Pushinka in the White House may have played a role in helping the leaders step back from the brink.
There were further space-dog missions, culminating in Ugolek (“Little Piece of Coal”) and Veterok (“Light Breeze”) spending 22 days in orbit – a mission that paved the way for the possibility of a permanent space station and gave Nasa the confidence to aim for the Moon. On 22 February 1966, the two dogs were launched into orbit in an adapted Voskhod capsule – a larger and more sophisticated spacecraft than the one that had carried Gagarin. After three weeks, they were still in space, alive and seemingly well.
The mission took Ugolek and Veterok high above the Earth, through the Van Allen radiation belts, and was designed to test the long-term effects of spaceflight on the body and the impact of potentially damaging space radiation. The dogs were fitted with a new generation of sensors – including devices surgically implanted in their hearts – and were automatically fed and given medication.
In their windowless capsule, adrift in the cosmos, Ugolek and Veterok might have wondered if they would ever again know a life where they could run beneath the sky or smell anything other than each other and the stale air they breathed. Eventually, after 22 days, the retro rockets fired and the dogs came safely back down to Earth. Their first steps were a little shaky, but they had survived their ordeal physically unscathed. Newsreel footage captured after the flight shows them looking subdued and suggests they may still have been traumatised by the experience. The legacy of Ugolek and Veterok’s mission, however, was a better understanding of long-duration spaceflight.
Today’s astronauts, living for months on end on the International Space Station, or those training for a return to the Moon or a trip to Mars, still owe their comfort and safety to the pioneering efforts of the stray dogs of the Soviet Union. In 2008, a monument to Laika was unveiled in Moscow. Her contribution was never forgotten by the scientists who sent her into space.
A version of this article first appeared in The Sunday Times. © The Sunday Times/News Licensing.
Extracted from Space Dogs: The Story of the Celebrated Canine Cosmonauts,
a new book of photographs of memorabilia collected by Martin Parr, with text by Richard Hollingham, published by Laurence King at £12.99. To buy from The Week bookshop at £10.99, call 020-3176 3835.