Sixty years ago, the Laika bitch, withdrawn from the streets of Moscow, the capital of Russia, took off on a journey with no return and became the first living being sent into space. The launch took place on November 3, 1957, just a month after the first Soviet Sputnik was put into orbit, and the ship that carried Laika was the second artificial satellite in history. She survived only a few hours.
"I asked her to forgive me and I cried when I caressed her the last time," recalls biologist Adilia Kotovskaya. Scientists knew that Laika would die on the flight, as there were no methods available to bring her back. The official version, which was endorsed for years by the Russian authorities, stated that the dog was painlessly sacrificed with a poison deposited in its food - but, a long time later, the space agency revealed that it could not withstand the heat inside the ship and died of dehydration. For the Soviet leader of the time, Nikita Khrushchev, the purpose of sending Laika into space was to demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet Union over the United States.
Her nine rounds around Earth have turned Laika into the first cosmonaut on the planet, sacrificed for the success of future space missions," said Adilia Kotovskaya, who is now 90 years old and still proud to have helped train animals for space missions . She recalls that previously, other dogs had been sent to suborbital altitudes for a few minutes to see if it was possible to live in a non-gravity environment. "So it's time to send a living being into space," he said.
To get used to the space flight in a pressurized capsule of 80 centimeters in length, the dogs were placed in smaller and smaller cages, the scientist recalls. They were placed in a centrifuge that simulated the acceleration of a rocket at the time of takeoff, subjected to noises that imitated the interior of a spacecraft and fed with space food with gelatin.
Laika, a mutt of about three years and six kilos, was retrieved from the streets of Moscow, as were other "candidates." "They were chosen bitches because they did not have to raise their paws to urinate and therefore needed less space than the males - and without pedigree because they are smarter and less demanding," explained the specialist, who currently runs a laboratory of the Institute of Medical Problems -Biological of Moscow.
The candidates also needed to be photogenic and the choice of their name should have the maximum impact on the population.
Heat and dehydration
Laika - name derived from the verb bark in Russian - was chosen from six candidates for its clever, docile character and a curious look. "Of course we knew he was going to die on the flight as there was no way to rescue it, nonexistent at the time," added the senior scientist.
The launch of Sputnik with Laika on board took place on November 3, 1957, at 05h30 (Moscow time), in Kazakhstan. "Obviously, when the rocket went up, Laika's heart rate increased considerably," Adilia Kotovskaya recalled. At the end of three hours, the dog regained its normal rhythm.
Suddenly, after the ninth rotation around Earth, the temperature inside Laika's capsule began to rise and surpassed 40 ° C, with insufficient protection against solar radiation. The result was that Laika, who should have survived between eight and ten days, died after a few hours due to overheating and dehydration.
The Soviet radio continued, however, informing daily on the "good health of Laika", that became planetary heroine. According to the official long-held version of Moscow, Laika died of a poison placed on her food to avoid a painful death in the return of the ship to the atmosphere.
Sputnik disintegrated into the atmosphere on April 14, 1958 on the Antilles, with its passenger dead for five months. On August 19, 1960, a space flight brought alive back to earth two space dogs, Belka and Strelka, clearing the way for the first inhabited flight of the Soviet Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.