3rd Nov
~ in some ways should make us remember a stray dog that earlier wandered on the
streets of Moscow before human interests took it over. As US scientists used monkeys, Soviet
scientists were inclined towards Moscow strays since they assumed that such
animals had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold and hunger
! this one had no home, strayed on the
streets later to have a coffin in space for a while !!
Before reading that
– a simple man, a son of a carpenter born in the village of Klushino in
Smolensk, Russia in 1934 was to attain great fame. At 16, he moved to Moscow to
apprentice as a foundry man in a metal works, but soon transferred to a
technical school in Saratov. There, Gagarin joined a flying club and took to
the skies for the first time. The first
human spaceflight was launched by the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961 as a part
of the Vostok program, with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard. Humans have been
continuously present in space for 16 years and 360 days on the International
Space Station. All early human spaceflight was crewed, where at least some of
the passengers acted to carry out tasks of piloting or operating the
spacecraft. After 2015, several human-capable spacecraft are being explicitly
designed with the ability to operate autonomously.
The first
man on space - Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He
was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft
completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.
Gagarin became an
international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero
of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honor. Vostok 1 marked his only
spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission .. .. Gagarin
became an international celebrity, toured the world and was showered with
honors by his country. Krushchev’s government awarded him the Order of Lenin,
and named him a Hero of the Soviet Union. Gagarin’s triumph was a painful blow
to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961.
A few years later
in Mar 1968, Gagarin was killed when a
two-seater MiG-15 fighter jet he was flying with Vladimir Seryogin, crashed
outside a small town near Moscow during a routine training flight. An official investigation into the accident
concluded that Gagarin swerved to avoid a foreign object—such as a bird or
weather balloon—sending the plane into a tailspin that ended with its crash
into the ground. Many would not buy this
theory and History.com was to state that when the papers were declassified,
truth did come out. In 2013, Leonov
announced on the Russia Today TV network that another report on the crash,
recently declassified, confirmed the real story: A second plane being tested
that day, an Su-15 jet, mistakenly flew far lower than its planned altitude of
33,000 feet, instead passing close to where Gagarin’s plane had been flying,
around 2,000 feet. So it was more of an accident !
Now back to that
stray dog named ‘Laika’ which too ventured into space but not a landmark event
for thyself – but was confused and afraid
of the happenings around. Its masters were to celebrate its voyage into Earth’s
orbit as a landmark moment in human history. For Laika, the dog, those last weeks of her life were a terrifying
and heartbreaking ordeal. Laika became
one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. The
street dog of Moscow had been selected to
be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer
space on November 3, 1957.
Little was known
about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's
mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so Laika's
survival was never expected. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to
survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed
flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. Laika, sadly died
within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7
sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death
were not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died
when her oxygen ran out on day six or, as the Soviet government initially
claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion.
Russian scientists
knew Laika wasn’t going to come back. The satellite they’d built wasn’t
equipped for a safe reentry. They knew that she would not survive the trip
home. Outside of the Soviet Union,
Laika’s doomed mission was an outrage. The British, in particular, campaigned
to stop the mission. The Daily Mirror ran an article with the headline, “The
Dog Will Die, We Can’t Save It.” The Soviets didn’t understand why they were so
upset. “The Russians love dogs,” they responded in a statement. “This has been
done not for the sake of cruelty but for the benefit of humanity.”
Some maintain that Laika’s
death was avoidable. In the original plan, Laika was to come home. However, Khrushchev viewed Laika’s journey as a piece
of propaganda, and he wanted it timed to perfection. He wanted Sputnik 2 to
blast off on the 40th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and
he ordered the scientists to rush the job so he could get the date right. The scientists now had four weeks to make the
first spacecraft capable of sending a living thing into orbit. It was enough
time to do it, but not enough to make one that could come back. After five
months and 2,570 orbits around the Earth, the satellite that had become Laika’s
coffin fell down to the Earth. It streaked across the sky while people around
the world watched, creating a small panic in the United States.
The blast off,
orbit or return – nothing was significant for the poor animal, though it was a
remarkable event for humans !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
3rd Nov 2017.
