![]() ![]() Like all the other candidates for space, she was a female stray found on a Moscow street. ![]() Laika was a mongrel dog aged around three who weighed six kilograms (13 pounds). The canine candidates spent time in a centrifuge, that simulates the gruelling G-forces created when a rocket blasts off, as well as being exposed to similar noise levels. ![]() To get dogs accustomed to the idea of space travel inside a pressurised capsule just 80 centimetres (31 inches) long, Kotovskaya gradually moved them into smaller and smaller cages.Īn effigy of Laika inside a replica of satellite Sputnik II is on display to visitors at the Central House of Aviation and Cosmonautics in Moscow The institute specialises in space science and simulated a flight to Mars in 2010 by making volunteers spend 520 days in isolation. "Now it was time to send one into space," says Kotovskaya, who turned 90 in October but still heads a laboratory at Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems. Kotovskaya recalls that before Laika, several dogs had been blasted up into suborbital space for brief periods of a few minutes "to check that it was possible to survive in weightlessness." In a well-timed propaganda effort, it fell just before the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7. "Those nine orbits of Earth made Laika the world's first cosmonaut-sacrificed for the sake of the success of future space missions," says Kotovskaya, who remains proud of her pioneering work as a scientist training Laika and other early space animals.įor Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Laika's voyage was yet another space feat to discomfit the Americans. It followed the first ever Sputnik satellite launch earlier that year.īut things did not go exactly to plan and the dog was only able to survive for a few hours, flying around the Earth nine times. The Soviet Union sent Laika up to spacein a satellite on November 3, 1957-sixty years ago. All rights reserved.The former street dog was about to make history as the first living creature to orbit the earth, blasting off on a one-way journey. Real-Time Analytics of Transportation Data LabĬopyright © 1995-2023, Iowa State University of Science and Technology.Program for Sustainable Pavement Engineering and Research.National Concrete Pavement Technology Center.National Center for Wood Transportation Structures.Iowa Statewide Urban Design and Specifications.Iowa Local Technical Assistance Program.Construction Management and Technology Program.Center for Weather Impacts on Mobility and Safety.Center for Transportation Research and Education.Center for Earthworks Engineering Research.Asphalt Materials and Pavements Program.Mobility, Data Analytics, and Resiliency.To learn more about the real Laika as well as this historical graphic novel, visit Nick Abadzis’s website. Although the loose, hand-drawn style was less successful for portraying the adult male characters (I kept mixing them up), it worked really well for creating the most compelling character, the dog, who became known as Laika. Although Yelena’s not supposed to become emotionally attached to her charges, she can’t resist Kudryavka, Little Curly.Ībadzis’s use of muted colors and heavy lines help convey the emotion of this story. But she knows that sometimes the dogs don’t return from the tests. She doesn’t know what sort of training is going on exactly. There the dog is cared for by Yelena, a young woman who takes cares of all the dogs being trained and tested. Then she’s caught in a dog catcher’s net and sent to the Institue of Aviation Medicine. He even shows her dreams, hinting at her future flight. The puppy is a cute little brown and white dog with a curled up tail.Ībadzis, who is both author and artist, portrays the dog as patient and tough, surviving on the streets. In Chapter 2, readers meet the puppy that will grow up to be the first dog in space. I will not die.”įast forward 18 years and this same man is now the chief designer of rockets with the idea to send an animal up in Sputnik II. A man has just been released and is trudging through the snow, telling himself over and over, “I am a man of destiny. The novel begins somewhere in the far north of the Soviet Union, outside a gulag, one of the camps for political prisoners. Laika by Nick Abadzis is a full-color graphic novel that weaves historical fact with imaginative fiction to tell the story of the first dog in space. It had to be different somehow from Sputnik I, and he wanted it done in just over a month, in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7 (by the western calendar). Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev wanted to follow up immediately with another success. Sputnik I was a terrific coup for the Soviets. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by being the first country to successfully launch an artificial satellite into space. ![]()
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