Laika and What She Taught Us

Laika was the first living creature to orbit the earth. She was a dog employed by the Soviets to fly aboard Sputnik 2. She died hours after launch on November 3rd 1957 from hyperthermia. Her survival was never expected.

Before the launch of Sputnik 2, there was little known about how space travel would affect a living body. Throughout the mission, Laika’s vital signs were constantly being measured, in order to prove that a living organism could survive being launched into space, as well as the conditions of weakened gravity and increased radiation on the aircraft.

The building of Sputnik 2 was rushed. Khrushchev, the then prime minister of the Soviet Union, wanted a spectacular launch in less than a month. Drawings were rushed – the primary goal of the engineers was to work as quickly as possible[1]. Could it be that this haste design and build is one of the key things that led to Laika’s untimely death?

Laika’s vital signs were measured throughout flight, and contrasted with her baseline vitals as established in previous training. The parameters of the cabin environment were also measured and it was seen that cabin pressure did not change throughout takeoff, and throughout the flight there was sufficient oxygen[2]. The monitoring of Laika’s heart rate, breathing and blood pressure proved that long periods of weightlessness do not cause fatal changes in a living organism. While her heart rate did jump to 240 beats/min due to the mental stress of the situation, it settled down to her resting heart rate of 102 beats/min after several hours. It was proved that human travel to space is a very real possibility.

The mission was deemed successful, and the Soviet Union leaped ahead in the Space Race, but Laika still died within hours of launch. The nose core of the spacecraft was successfully jettisoned but unfortunately the Block A core did not separate properly. This disrupted the thermal control system, as well as the fact that some thermal insulation came loose[3]. A scientist working on Sputnik 2, Dimitri Malashenkov, said “It turned out that it was practically impossible to create a reliable temperature control system in such limited time constraints.”[2] Hence, the temperature in Laika’s capsule rose to 40°C, and Laika died from overheating just seven hours into her fateful voyage.

Laika’s journey was not a waste, however. Just 4 years later Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel to space.[4] Despite her short flight, she proved that a living creature could survive the weightlessness of space for extended periods of time, and the concept of touching the stars only became more and more real.

[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/history/sputnik/harford.html

[2]: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002iaf..confE.288M/abstract

[3]: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1957-002A

[4]:https://books.google.ie/books?id=A3xxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false