Sputnik 2

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Sputnik 2, launched on 3 November 1957, carried the first living creature to orbit the Earth: a small dog named Laika. Barely a month after Sputnik 1's triumph, Soviet leaders wanted a spectacular follow-up to mark the anniversary of the revolution, and engineers were given only weeks to build a craft to carry an animal. Laika was a stray, picked up on the streets of Moscow — strays were thought to be hardy — and trained, with two others, to endure the cramped capsule, the noise and the acceleration of launch. She was fitted with sensors to report her heartbeat and breathing as she became the first Earthly life to leave the planet. The mission was always one-way. The technology to bring a spacecraft safely back from orbit did not yet exist, and Sputnik 2 had no way to return. The plan was for Laika to live for several days and then die painlessly; the truth, revealed decades later, was harsher. The cabin's cooling failed, and Laika died of overheating within hours of reaching orbit, far sooner than the public was told at the time. For years the Soviet Union maintained that she had survived for days; only in the post-Soviet era did those involved speak openly about what had happened, and some expressed regret. Laika never came home, but she proved that a living being could survive launch and weightlessness — the essential question before any human could fly. She is remembered as a pioneer who did not choose her mission, and as a reminder of its early cost.

1. 1957Laika reaches orbitLaunch

   Sputnik 2 carries the dog Laika, the first living creature to orbit Earth, on a one-way flight.

2. 1957A life in orbitMilestone

   Sensors confirm a living being can survive launch; Laika dies of overheating within hours.

3. 1958Re-entryMission end

   Sputnik 2 burns up after months in orbit.

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