It was designed to be a one way trip to space and death for Laika, as the necessary technology to return a payload safely back to Earth had not yet been developed at that time. The journey was, however, never going to be a round trip. Patches of her body were specifically treated so that they could receive electrodes that were used to monitor her vital signs. Laika was surrounded by soft padding and life-support equipment, with a special harness that restricted her movements, but allowed her to bark.Īir regeneration systems provided oxygen and Laika’s coat were groomed and combed. Merely a month after launching Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 2 was launched. And on November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik 2, with Laika aboard. She was chosen ahead of the other dogs for her calm demeanour. Initially called Kudryavka, or Little Curly, she was later nicknamed Laika, or Barker. Along with two other dogs (Albina and Mushka), she was trained for space travel by being kept in small cages and eating nutritious gel that was to be food in space. Laika was a stray female mutt that was picked from the streets of Moscow. Their objective? To understand the effects of weightlessness and thus test the safety and feasibility of sending human beings to space, and bringing them back unharmed. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been putting animals atop rockets since 1947 as they tried to edge each other in their space race. You know Laika, don’t you? Not the first animal in space, but in fact the first to orbit Earth. This week, we will see how Laika’s death immortalised her, forever occupying an important position is our space history. We saw last week that Wallace Carothers ended his own life even while still at the peak of his career. And yet, it is a given that every one of us will be dead one day. There are questions pertaining to death that continue to remain unanswered.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |