Hey guys what's up it's Charlie here and today we're going to be looking at what
happened to the first dog in space we all know the astronauts who could all
the credit for space exploration but did you know that some of the first things
in space were animals on this channel we've already looked at the first monkey
in space but now it's time for even more sad story the first dog in space but boy
blast-off why not subscribe and press the
notification bell to the dog at the center of this story is a female dog
named Laika lekha was born in 1954 on the 3rd of November in the Soviet Union
she was born in Moscow USSR which is now Moscow Russia
lekha was actually what's known as a street dog this is a dog which is kind
of wild and out on the streets so she had no home but in 1955 she was taken by
a Soviet space program engineer she was taken by this man and selected to be on
the Soviet space craft Sputnik 2 the mission of Sputnik 2 was to triumph
their previous launch of Sputnik 1 they wanted to amaze the world with the power
of the Soviet Union remember at this time the USSR and the USA were at war
this was known as the Cold War and during the Cold War was what was known
as the space race this was basically a race as to who could do space
exploration better the USA or the USSR well for testing Soviet officials
decided to do something with Sputnik 2 they wanted to put a dog into the rocket
to see how long dogs could survive in zero-gravity Sputnik 2 also had
instruments for measuring solar inter aliens and cosmic rays it also had a
life-support machine with an oxygen generator and inside it was a fan which
would activate whenever the cabin got over 15 degrees centigrade this fan was
added to make sure the talk would always be cool and would survive for a long
time now the mission was amazing as it was launching the first living thing
into orbit but the Soviets did not sugarcoat what was going to happen they
said lekha was not going to return alive this caused outrage around the world
that they would be sacrificing a dog but despite the bad PR the mission went
hair as part of lakish training she did some sub orbital flights this is kind of
like what astronauts do today before going out into space it's done in a
controlled zero-gravity environment and really it's done in a zero-gravity room
it's not done in a spaceship also to help laker adapt to Sputnik 2 she was
kept in a smaller cage for 20 days before the mission this cost Lake his
blood pressure to double and she also began to get quite ill and restless Lake
was also trained to eat a high nutrition gel that would be in her space food one
day before the launch one of the engineers for the Soviet space program
tote Lake a home to play with his kids the man was named dr. vladimir yadav ski
he later wrote in his mole that lekha was very quiet and charming he said he
took a home to play with his kids to do something nice for lekha he knew she had
little time left to live and wanted her to have a nice final day on earth but he
kind of felt too bad for Leakey as she was still put into the rocket by him
then on the 3rd of November 1957 Sputnik 2 launched liftoff occurred at 5:30 a.m.
Moscow time at first it was normal and Laker got
into outer space the rocket was supposed to split into two but there was an error
and part of it did not separate this cause of their thermal control system to
malfunction remember how I told you about the fan and the cooling system
they put in before yeah that stopped working and lekha began to overheat the
cabin was not supposed to get above 15 degrees centigrade but instead it got up
to 40 degrees centigrade sadly lekha had nowhere to go and could
do nothing but wait until she passed away within a few minutes Laker did
overheat and passed away this is a very sad way to go
she was actually supposed to be poisoned by a poisoned food package the
scientists had put in the rocket but instead sadly from this malfunction
lekha passed away from overheating for about five months
Sputnik 2 and Lakers body revolved around earth it floated in space and
orbited the earth two thousand five hundred and seventy times then 162 days
after the launch Sputnik 2 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere
however in reentry to the Earth's atmosphere Sputnik 2 burns her
and of course so did Lakers remains at first the Soviet Union said that Laker
had passed away painlessly in orbit and they said it happened about a week after
blast-off but that was actually not the case obviously after the blast-off it
took like just a few hours to pass away and sadly it likely was not painless at
all the USSR said this so they wouldn't get bad publicity and also so that they
looked better in the space race but many years later in 2002 the real truth about
what happened was revealed lakyn now has a big legacy in Russia and
around the world in Moscow there's a statue to voted to Laker and it also
brought up many ethical questions about the USA and USSR using animals for the
space race and after Laker all future space missions carrying dogs were
designed to be recovered so that was the sad story of Laker in space but now it's
time to make your opinion heard who do you think won the space race the USSR or
the USA the USSR got the first man and animal into space however the USA had
the first man to land on the moon if you guys want some more amazing videos then
check out my second channel they'll be linked to that on screen in a moment but
as always thanks for watching check out some more videos on screen right now
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