Speaking of the first man to go into space, we all know his name: Yuri Alexievich Gagarin, but did you know what? Before Gagarin first landed in space, former Soviet experts sent many dogs to space in order to test whether Earth creatures could enter space and test the performance of spacecraft, the first of which was Lyka.
Laika was originally a stray dog, adopted by aerospace experts and raised as a space animal, but was forced to carry out a space mission that was doomed to never return, and eventually died in space, and the death was very painful.
Lycra
In the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union launched a series of competitions in the field of spaceflight, which is also known as "space hegemony", in this competition, the former Soviet Union maintained its advantage at the beginning, for example, the former Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 into space.
Immediately after the successful launch of Sputnik 1, it was ready to launch Sputnik 2, but this time, the former Soviet Union was ready to let life on Earth follow the spacecraft into space.
Different countries have different preferences when choosing animals, among which the former Soviet Union's favorite is dogs, however, not all dogs can enter space, and staff are more inclined to choose stray dogs, because stray dogs are more survivable and more tolerant of harsh environments.
Secondly, it must also be a female dog, because the action of the male dog lifting its legs to pee is not conducive to their space mission.
Moreover, the age can not be too small, nor too large, 1-4 years old is the most popular. Because the space space of the spacecraft is small, the weight it can carry is not much, and it is also required that the weight of the dog should not exceed 10 kilograms.
In this context, the stray dog Lycra was chosen, and when it was found, it was wandering the streets of Moscow, and people took it to the space base to provide food for it, but also let it receive a lot of space training.
There are 9 dogs like Laika, and they all receive a lot of training, such as: keeping stray dogs in smaller cages for more than 20 days, undergoing centrifuge training, simulating acceleration and noise during launch. In each experiment, Laika performed very well and was selected to be the first Earth life to land in space. What it doesn't know, however, is that it is its own excellence that takes its own life.
It turned out that although the former Soviet Union planned to carry an animal into space, the preparation time of Sputnik 2 was too short, and the designers had not yet had time to design a return system for it, which meant that Laika's space journey was a journey with no return. On the eve of the launch, many of the staff members stroked it to tears, and even one staff member took it home to play with his children a few days before its launch, because they all knew that Laika was destined not to come back, but there was no way, there would be other dogs on mission without it.
The truth of his death was concealed for 45 years
Although Laika boarded a spaceship that was doomed to never return, people still cared about how it died.
According to the original plan, after Lycra landed in space, it would sail in Orbit on Earth for a week, during which time it would be able to obtain food and water on the spacecraft and be able to support it for such a long time.
Finally, it will eat a poisonous meal containing poison, and although the poisonous meal is poisonous, Laika will die painlessly.
The truth of this death has always been officially reported, and although people are distressed by the stray dog Laika, they think that its sacrifice is glorious, and that its death process is not painful and accepted.
But what people didn't expect was that even Laika's death was a hoax. It turned out that the spacecraft had no ability to guarantee the survival of a life for 7 days, and Laika died of heat stroke due to overheating in the space capsule during the fourth circle around the earth, and according to the heartbeat, pulse and other data it transmitted back, it showed that Laika suffered severe pain before dying.
However, the truth of Laika's death was concealed until 2002, when the truth of Laika's death was revealed, and 45 years had passed since Laika's death.
5 months after Laika landed in space, the spaceship Sputnik 2 it was riding on fell into the Earth's atmosphere under the influence of earth's gravity, and burned in the earth's atmosphere, and Laika also returned to Earth with the spacecraft during this period, but the bones were gone.
After Laika's death, people in many countries and regions around the world spontaneously commemorated Laika, some people wrote songs for it, some people carved statues for it, and some countries issued Lycra stamps.
Even Moscow, where Laika wandered, erected a monument to it in 2008, and Laika once again lived in people's minds.
Later, the former Soviet Union launched a number of spacecraft, and many spacecraft carried dogs into space, but they were all much luckier than Laika, not only successfully entering space, but also returning alive, and even some even gave birth to puppies. Of course, dogs that have entered space are treated very well, and they are treated as space heroes when they return to Earth.