Space Dogs

The canine cosmonauts of the soviet space program

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IN JUNE 1961, an unusual delivery was made to the American White House. Pushinka, a shaggy mixed-breed puppy, had been dispatched on the personal order of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as a gift to the wife and daughter of President John F. Kennedy.

The pooch may not have been a purebred, but she had something much more impressive in her bloodline: as an accompanying letter explained, Pushinka was “a direct descendant of the famous space traveler Strelka.”

Some thought the gift was a subtle way of rubbing in the fact that the Soviet Union was leading in the space race, but it could also be seen as a gesture meant to promote warmer relations between the two superpowers. Both perspectives fit into the vast mythology that surrounded the high-flying pooches Belka and Strelka, the first animals to successfully return from orbit sixty years ago, in 1960.

A CORPS OF CURS

It was another canine pair that was supposed to make the historic flight. Belka and Strelka were being trained as backups to the lead space dogs, Chaika and the red-haired Lisichka, who were much beloved by the Soviet space program’s chief designer, Sergei Korolyov. But Lisichka and Chaika died earlier that year when their rocket exploded during launch. After this catastrophe, it was considered bad luck to send copper-colored dogs into space.