Space dogs, and a cat

Space dogs, and a cat

Laika a female Samoyed husky, became the first animal in orbit after being launched by the USSR in Sputnik 2 on 3 November 1957. There was no way to bring her down and she died after ten days in space. More dogs were launched in tests before human cosmonauts went into orbit. Two female Samoyed huskies. Belka and Strelka, orbited successfully on 19 August 1960. Strelka later gave birth to six puppies, one of which was given to US President John F. Kennedy On 18 October 1963. a French Veronique AGI rocket launched a cat called Félix into space and returned him safely to Earth by parachute

Monkey business

Able a female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a female squirrel monkey, were launched by the USA on 28 May 1959, They did not orbit and successfully returned to Earth. On 29 November 1961 Enos, a male chimpanzee completed two arbits and survived. Many other chimpanzees and monkeys have since orbited. The USSR's first space primates were monkeys Abrek and Bion, who orbited on 14 December 1983 in one of a series of Bion satellite experiments, which also carried tortoises. rats. insects, fish, newts and frogs

Flying frogs On 9 November 1970, the USA's Orbiting Frog Otolith satellite (OFO-A) launched two bullfrogs into orbit for a week. Between 2 and 10 December 1990, Toyohiro Akiyama, a japanese journalist, took six green tree frogs to the Soviet Mir space station to conduct weightlessness experiments

Worldwide web

Arabella, an orb-weaving garden spider, arrived at the US Skylab-3 on 28 July 1973. She spent almost 60 days in orbit in an experiment to test the effect of weightlessness on her web-weaving skills.

A space menagerie

The STS-90 mission of space shuttle Columbia (17 April to May 1998) contained the Neurolab -a space menagerie with 3 170 baby rats, 18 mice, 229 swordtail fish, 135 snails, four oyster toad fish and 1,514 cricket eggs and larvae.

Can of worms

On 1 February 2003, space shuttle Columbia STS-107 broke up on re-entry and its crew of seven astronauts were killed. On-board animal experiments involving silkworms, spiders, carpenter bees, harvester ants and Japanese killifish were destroyed, but, amazingly, canisters of worms were recovered alive