history should spare a thought for the first animal to go into orbit. She was a placid little dog named Laika (Barker) after the public heard her barking on the radio in the run-up to the mission. Attached to sensors, and in a tiny space suit, she made at least one orbit of Earth before succumbing to heat and stress. A popular Soviet children’s book at the time told her story with a happy ending. In reality her death aboard Sputnik 2 helped to prove that humans could live in space.
