Exploring beyond our planet has long become a human obsession. Travel to space, even those considered tourist flights, are already a reality. But, before all this began to be possible, animals were the first living beings to leave our atmosphere .
These creatures are always the first “to suffer” from any kind of scientific advance, as it is obviously much safer for humans to test any invention or theory on an animal. As far as space travel is concerned, it was no different, and there were several animals that traveled to space long before the first human astronaut existed.
During the 20th century, and especially during the Cold War , there were many attempts to send animals into space by the United States and Russia, although there were also attempts by other powers. Next you have the most important animals that traveled to space.
Flies, the first astronauts
Although when we talk about animals in space we always go to the best known as Laika, we cannot forget that the first living being to travel to space was a fly . In 1947, American scientists sent a group of flies together with some seeds in a rocket. Specifically, on February 20, 1947, the rocket exceeded 100 kilometers in height.
The most surprising thing about this flight was that most of these flies returned to planet earth alive. The main objective of this flight was to see how high-altitude solar radiation affected these beings , as well as height and speed. This is due to the fact that flies share some relevant gene with humans, and since they have a highly accelerated reproduction mechanism, it was possible for them to verify whether some secondary effects of flight could produce alterations in descendants.
Albert, the first mammal in space
While flies were the first creatures to go into space, Albert the monkey was the first mammal to do so . After the fly experiment, the United States decided to move on to sending monkeys into space, a logical step considering that they share a large number of genes with humans. Albert the monkey, in fact, was a Rhesus macaque, a species that shares 97.5% of its genome with humans.
Albert the monkey.
The first Albert monkey that was sent into space died due to the conditions of the flight and that their ships ended up crashed. NASA started sending more monkeys after this one , and they were all named Albert II, Albert III, Albert IV, etc. Later, another monkey named Yorick was sent along with rats and was the first to reach the ground safely after the flight, but unfortunately he died a few hours after landing.
The Russian space program chose the dog Laika
In the midst of the Cold War, the United States and Russia were competing to be the first to reach space. While the American program focused on monkeys, Russian scientists opted to send a dog into space. This was Laika, and it is possibly one of the most famous animals in history. His journey into space occurred on November 3, 1957, and he was the first animal to orbit the Earth .
The story of this dog is quite curious, and it was a stray dog that was chosen after passing several tests. As a curiosity, the Russian scientists opted for a female dog instead of a dog because they do not need to raise their legs to urinate, so the room where they made the trip could be somewhat smaller.
The dog Laika before her trip.
Before Laika, other dogs such as Dezik and Tsygan were also sent into space, but these did not reach orbit. Laika, who unfortunately died during the flight due to overheating of the ship she was on, became an icon of progress for Russia. To this day, in fact, we can see a statue in his honor in the Moscow Cosmonautical Museum.
Félicette, the attempt of the French
The animals that have traveled the most to space have been, as you have been able to read a little above, monkeys, rats and dogs. However, the French, in their attempt to carry out their own experiments, decided to send a feline, specifically a cat named Félicette. Interestingly, this stray cat is the only cat that has traveled to space and returned alive .
Felicette the cat
Félicette was implanted with a series of electrodes to be able to control her constants while the flight was taking place, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 160 kilometers . At that moment, Félicette arrived on earth and was greeted with cheers by the French people. After this moment, she lived a few months normally, but the French scientists decided to sacrifice her in order to study how the flight had affected her body.
other animals in space
Although all the animals that you have above are the most important in history, we cannot close this text without mentioning other living beings that also served to open the path of space travel for human beings, or others that accompanied these on their flights. One of them was Ham, a chimpanzee who flew in 1963 and was the first hominid to survive suborbital flight . He lived until 1983 at the age of 25.
Not only he, but also others such as turtles, rabbits, jellyfish, insects or spiders have been accompanying human beings during their travels to see how weightlessness or space flight affected their organisms. The last to live test flights have been the tardigrades, microscopic beings that are capable of surviving totally extreme situations (such as a vacuum or temperatures of more than 200 degrees below zero).
