Laika became the first animal<\/a> to orbit Earth aboard Sputnik 2. <\/p>\nSadly, it was a one-way trip. The technology to bring her home did not exist, and she died within hours.<\/p>\n
The Moscow stray named Laika is ready to blast off in the Sputnik 2 capsule in 1957. Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n
America fired back in 1958 with Gordo, a squirrel monkey who survived launch, weightlessness and reentry \u2014 only for his parachute to fail. His capsule vanished into the Atlantic. <\/p>\n
The following year, Miss Able and Miss Baker became the first monkeys to survive spaceflight. <\/p>\n
Able died four days later, but Baker lived until 1984 and became a beloved celebrity at Alabama\u2019s US Space and Rocket Center, where visitors still leave bananas on her grave.<\/p>\n
US space monkey Miss Able is prepared for her historic flight in 1959. Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n
In 1960, Soviet dogs Belka and Strelka became the first animals to orbit Earth and make it back safely. Strelka later had puppies, including Pushinka, who Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave to President John F. Kennedy\u2019s daughter Caroline.<\/p>\n
Next came Ham, an American chimpanzee trained to operate levers during flight. His 1961 mission proved a passenger could think and perform tasks in space, helping clear the launchpad for Alan Shepard to become the first American in space months later. That same year, Enos became the first \u2014 and only \u2014 chimp to orbit Earth. <\/p>\n
A crew member performs an experiment on an adult female frog during a space mission on the shuttle Endeavour. Getty Images<\/p>\n
F\u00e9licette, a black and white female cat found on the streets of Paris, was sent into space on Oct. 18, 1963. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
France joined the menagerie in 1963, launching F\u00e9licette, a black-and-white Paris street cat who became the first and only feline to reach space. She survived but was euthanized two months later for scientific study.<\/p>\n
In 1968, two Soviet tortoises aboard Zond 5 became the first Earth creatures to circle the Moon and return alive. <\/p>\n
Apparently, the Russians figured slow and steady would win the space race.<\/p>\n
After humans reached the moon in 1969, larger animal astronauts were mostly grounded, but the cosmic zoo kept growing. Apollo 17 carried five mice \u2014 Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum and Phooey \u2014 around the Moon in 1972, while spiders Arabella and Anita showed Skylab in 1973 that webs could be spun in weightlessness. <\/p>\n
The spider Arabella from the Skylab 3 mission went to space on July 28, 1973. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum<\/p>\n
Then, in 2007, microscopic tardigrades \u2014 nicknamed \u201cwater bears\u201d \u2014 pulled off the ultimate survival trick: enduring direct exposure to the vacuum of space.<\/p>\n
Today, most animals sent to the International Space Station<\/a>, helping researchers study bone loss, muscle wasting, are part of large-scale biomedical studies. They are housed in specialized, drawer-like habitats and tracked by numbers, barcodes or experimental groups rather than personal names<\/p>\nNASA calls these pioneering creatures the \u201cunsung heroes of animal astronauts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For nearly 80 years, some very unlikely astronauts have boldly gone where no fruit fly, dog, monkey or…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1045156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[3425,13633,4654,31650,994,916,212315,63804,7835,5565,257,159,783,23193,67,132,68,1154],"class_list":["post-1045155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-animals","tag-astronauts","tag-dogs","tag-monkeys","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-neil-armstrong","tag-rabbits","tag-rats","tag-rockets","tag-russia","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-program","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-us-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117219153072046208","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1045156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}