A SPACE MENAGERIE

During the space race, animals pavedthe way for humans to travel beyond Earth. Stephen Walker shines a light on these largely forgotten creatures and their often fatal journeys

- Stephen Walker

The ape escape

The capsule containing Ham the “chimponaut” is opened following his return to Earth in 1961. He lived another 22 years after his astronauts weren’t so lucky

Within hours of launch, Laika was the most famous dog in history. A mongrel – a dash of husky, a smattering of terrier – and by all accounts a lovable, sweet-tempered animal, she was now travelling in space about 1,000 miles above the surface of the planet. The date was 3 November 1957, the location of her launch a secret missile site in Soviet Kazakhstan, and her rocket a converted nuclear missile – the biggest in the world. It needed to be big, because Laika’s mission was to do something no other organism had achieved in the 3.5 billion years since life began: to orbit the Earth, circling it approximately every 90 minutes at 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet.

Laika wasn’t coming back: the technology didn’t yet exist to bring her home. Nobody doubted that the Soviets had scored a stunning success at the very height of the Cold War, but her grisly fate also earned them the condemnation of animal-lovers in the west. As she circled the planet, strapped and sealed in her tiny, windowless capsule with just seven days’ supply of food and oxygen, the National Canine Defence League in the UK called for a daily minute’s silence, and dog-lovers picketed the UN in New York. What the protesters didn’t know was that Laika was already dead: her capsule had overheated just a few hours after launch. The Soviets would hide that truth for decades.