If I asked you what was the first animal in space you might say Laika the dog. But the first animal in space was actually a tiny fruit fly, or should I say hundreds of fruit flies that visited space together in 1947. Instead Laika was the first animal to go into orbit around our planet, doing so in 1957, 10 years after the first fruit fly space expedition. It started with a fly but it certainly doesn’t end with a dog.

Oh the humanity. The first human to go into space was Yuri Gagarin. A cosmonaut from the Soviet Union he became the first man in space and the first man to orbit the planet on April 12th 1961 onboard Vostok 1. The first woman in space is also a good thing to know especially for your local pub quiz. Her name: Valentina Tereshkova, again from the Soviet Union. She launched two years after Yuri on June 16th 1963 and was the first woman in space orbiting the Earth 48 times on Vostok 6. But aren’t you just tired of people? I’d like to talk to you about some of the animals that reached space first paving the way for the likes of Yuri and Valentina.

But before we can reach space we need to work out where it is. How far up do we need to go to leave our planet? The boundary between ourselves and space is actually an imaginary line, called the Kármán Line, around 100km above our heads. It means if you launch above 100km you can say that you have made it to space. Between 160km and 1000km is called Low Earth Orbit, that’s the lowest you can be and still maintain an orbit around the planet. Any lower and you fall back down to Earth. To try and give some context the International Space Station orbits around 400km above our heads while the average large passenger plane only reaches a maximum altitude of around 12km.

So now we have our boundaries of space (100km) and of Low Earth Orbit (above 160km) we need to work out how to get there. So much happened between fruit flies in 1947 and Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. So if you’re ready hold your pets and loved ones tight. I have a feeling a lot of animals, and people, are going to lose their lives. And it starts with fruit flies.

Fruit flies [musical sting]

The first animal in space was the humble fruit fly. February 20th, 1947, America launches a V-2 rocket from New Mexico putting the first animals into space. The V-2 rocket came from Nazi Germany. The V stood for ‘vergeltungswaffen', or 'retaliatory weapon'. In the aftermath of World War II the Americans and Russians scrambled to gain this rocket technology. This V-2 rocket; which killed thousands in the Second World War, built by prisoners at concentration camps in Germany, whose designers killed an estimated 20,000 prisoners in its construction; now was being used by America to send fruit flies 100km into the sky. Fruit flies on Nazi rockets. Oh the humanity.

Not only were they the first animals in space, they were the first to return alive as well. The choice of fruit flies wasn’t random. Around 75 per cent of the genes that cause disease in humans are also found in the fruit fly. They only live for around 40 days, which means it’s easy to study results over multiple generations. They are also very small, on average around 3mm in length, which means scientists can store large numbers in small spaces. When the capsule landed safely back on Earth America saw that the cosmic radiation hadn’t caused mutation and suddenly the race to space was on. We now knew you could survive in space. But that ‘could’ doesn’t mean that you would. Future animals sent to space wouldn’t be quite so lucky.

Monkeys [musical sting]

In order to try and see what would happen to a human body America decided to shift to a more human-like animal. They started putting monkeys in space. And they got obsessed with calling them all Albert.

The story of the Alberts start, predictably, with Albert I. In 1948, one year after fruit fly success, Albert I suffocates inside his capsule before it even launches. Of course they still decide to launch anyway and are disappointed to see it only reaches a height of 63km.
In 1949 they double down in earnest and the first monkey to reach space is Albert II who reaches 134 km on June 14th, 1949. Albert II was carried aboard a V-2 rocket as well, though his fate was not as lucky as the fruit flies: a problem with the parachute on the recovery capsule means Albert II does not survive the landing.
September, 1949, and Albert III dies after only travelling 10km up when his V-2 rocket suddenly explodes.
December 1949 and Albert IV reaches space at 130km but dies on impact after another parachute failure. That’s three Alberts in a single year. Time to slow down.
Two years pass, it’s 1951, and they have learned their lessons as Albert V, oh no wait nothing has changed in two years, Albert V dies on impact due to, yes you’ve guessed it, yet another parachute failure.
At this point they began to think maybe a name change would help. Enter a monkey called Yorick. However it should be noted here that old habits die hard so Yorick was also known as Albert VI. Yorick, or Albert VI, launches on September 20th, 1951, and amazingly becomes the first monkey to survive a landing. This success needs to be kept in context though as Yorick, or Albert VI, dies just two hours after landing due to overheating as he sits inside his cramped capsule in the New Mexico sun, whilst waiting for his recovery crew to arrive. It’s almost like at this point they just didn’t think it would work. What constitutes a success can often be very dubious.

So let’s recap Alberts 1 through 6. 1- Suffocated before takeoff. 2- Made it to space, died on impact when parachute failed. 3- Rocket exploded. 4- Made it to space, died on impact when parachute failed. 5- Made it to space, died on impact when parachute failed. 6- Made it to space, survived landing! Yay! Died on Earth while waiting for recovery crew.

A brief fast forward takes me to my last mention of monkeys in space. Seven years after Albert VI, America sends a squirrel monkey called Gordo a whopping 960km into space. It shows that humans can survive weightlessness. It is considered a complete success. Even the capsule returns to Earth safely. And it is still considered a success when the floatation mechanism fails after Gordo successfully lands in the Atlantic Ocean. After six hours they call the search off. Today there still may be a capsule with a deceased squirrel monkey from space on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh the humanity.

Mouse break [musical sting]

America also liked to use mice, again with varying results. A notable effort came in 1959 when they tried to send four mice into space onboard a spy satellite. On their 1st attempt to launch, in order to protect the mice they were placed in a cage covered in a material called Krylon, which was intended to protect them from the cage’s sharp edges. The mice ate the Krylon cage covering and it was then discovered that the material was in fact toxic and the mice died. On their 2nd attempt to launch the mice were successfully placed in the capsule and surrounded by sensors so the team could measure their vital signs. Before launch one of the humidity sensors had a reading of 100% resulting in the launch being cancelled again. In checking they realised that the humidity sensor had been placed directly below the mouse cage and they found the sensor was covered in mouse wee. After a very deep clean and a repositioning of sensors it was time for 3rd launch lucky. Well, almost. On their 3rd attempt the mission did indeed launch but when the next stage of the rocket fired it fired in the opposite direction than intended. Instead of racing towards space this resulted in driving the capsule directly into the Pacific Ocean. This ended their attempts at putting mice inside spy satellites.

Dogs [musical sting]

At the same time America were using monkeys the Soviet Union favoured dogs. Female dogs were chosen because they were smaller and thought to be more docile. And so stray female dogs were rounded up from the streets of Moscow. They were tested and trained for obedience and passivity, put in small pressurized containers for days at a time, and checked to see their reactions to loud noises.

Just as America was coming to the end of their Albert programme two dogs called Tsygan and Desik reached an altitude of 110km on August 15th 1951 becoming the first dogs to achieve spaceflight, and this included a safe return to Earth. Don’t get your hopes up though. This doesn’t mean the Soviet Union were much better than America as Desik was rewarded with another trip to space just a month later, this time with a dog called Lisa, and this second trip, as you might have guessed, had a parachute malfunction and both dogs died on impact.

A further flight a month later in September 1951 was nearly cancelled when the dog called Bobik escaped and had to be replaced at short notice by an untrained stray. They called this new dog Zib, or Z-I-B, a Russian acronym for ‘Zamena Ischeznuvshemu Bobiku’ which heartwarmingly translates as ‘Substitute for the Missing Dog Bobik’. What an imagination. And these dog missions all lead to Laika. The first dog and the first being to go into orbit.

On October 4th 1957 the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1. It’s the first human made object to achieve Low Earth Orbit. To capitalise on this success they rush to get the first living being in orbit. On November 3rd 1957, a mere month later, Laika launches inside Sputnik 2 and makes history.

Laika was originally called Kudryavka, or Little Curly. When she was introduced to the public via radio, Kudryavka barked and became known as Laika, or “barker” in Russian. Doctors performed surgery embedding medical devices inside her body to monitor her heart, breathing rates, blood pressure and physical movement. This was a one-way trip; there was never any intention to bring Laika back alive. The plan was after 7 days in orbit her air supply would run low and she would die painlessly from oxygen deprivation. It took 45 years for the truth about Laika’s journey to be revealed. In 2002 at the World Space Congress in Houston, Texas, Dimitri Malashenkov, one of the scientists involved with Sputnik 2, finally revealed the medical readouts from Laika’s launch. Instead of living for 7 days the truth was that she had died just 5 hours into the journey due to overheating and stress.

The noises and pressures of the flight terrified Laika. Her heartbeat rocketed to triple the normal rate, and her breath rate quadrupled. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington holds declassified printouts showing Laika’s respiration during the flight. She reached orbit alive, circled the Earth in about 103 minutes. Unfortunately, the loss of the heat shield made the temperature in the capsule rise unexpectedly, taking its toll. She died soon after launch. Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five more months. Laika travelled lifeless for 5 months orbiting the Earth over 2,500 times before finally burning up while reentering Earth’s atmosphere on April 14th 1958.

Laika has a memorial in Russia, unveiled in 2008 at the Institute of Military Medicine in Moscow. Oh the humanity.

Cat [musical sting]

The Americans focused on monkeys, the Russians on dogs and France…well…France decided to send a cat into space.

Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova had already made it to space and orbited the planet at this point. But on October 18th 1963, an imaginatively named cat called C341 was launched by France on the also imaginatively titled Rocket No.47 from a base in the Sahara Desert, reaching an altitude of about 160km above Earth. The trip was brief, just 15 minutes in total. The capsule that contained the cat detached from its rocket and parachuted safely back to the ground. To celebrate her survival the French media wanted to give her something. She was finally given a real name, Félicette. Aw, hooray, finally a good, solid success… oh no wait, of course there’s no happy ending. Two months after Félicette’s return, she was quietly euthanized so that the scientific team could study her brain.

A crowdfunding campaign in 2017 means the extraterrestrial achievements of Félicette are commemorated in the form of a bronze statue at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.

Other Animals

There are so many animals that have been sent into space. Apart from the ones we’ve mentioned already there have been frogs, toads, worms, rabbits, rats, chimpanzees, guinea pigs, yes actual guinea pigs are used as actual space guinea pigs, turtles, spiders, fish, jellyfish, yes we have sent actual jellyfish into space, and the adorably named water bears also known as tardigrades. Space is beautiful, fascinating, and there is so much we don’t know about what is out there. What we do know is there has been so much suffering behind our space exploration. Our experience with space should be joyful. In the future I hope we can do better. I, for one, would happily take an animal’s place to visit space. Although I would want to double check the parachute before I left. So as we come towards a close, perhaps think about naming your cat C341, calling your new dog ‘a substitute for your old dog’, or maybe even rename your child Albert VI. But until then give your loved ones and pets a big hug from me.

Animals in space [musical outro]


References
https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/animals-in-space/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
https://science.howstuffworks.com/dead-animals-in-space.htm
https://history.nasa.gov/animals.html
https://science.howstuffworks.com/why-fruit-flies-were-first-animals-in-space.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-nazis-space-age-rocket