Belka and Strelka, two dogs in space

Of the animals that were once launched into space by humans, the dog Laika is the best known. The Russians launched this quadruped in November 1957 with the Sputnik 2. She became the first living creature to orbit the Earth, but did not survive the adventurous journey. Laika died of overheating and stress before the fourth round was completed. Three years later, the Russians again sent two dogs into space: Belka and Strelka. Unlike Laika, they did return to earth alive.

From the 1950s, space organizations decided to experiment with animals, mainly to investigate whether humans could also make space travel in the long run.

On August 19, 1960, Belka and Strelka were launched. A day later, after a journey of about 700,000 kilometers, they returned to Earth alive. The two four-legged friends were world famous in one fell swoop. They were the first living beings to travel into space and return alive. The successful operation was widely reported by the Soviet Union. The two dogs weren’t alone aboard the Sputnik, by the way; they were accompanied by a rat and some mice.

At a press conference after the expedition, a spokesman for the Russian Academy of Sciences, Gazenko, proudly showed the animals to the arriving journalists so that he could prove that the animals were completely unharmed. Two weeks earlier, two dogs had already been placed in a Russian rocket. However, these four-legged friends, Chaika and Lisichka, did not achieve eternal fame because their rocket exploded on launch.

During their historic journey, Belka and Strelka were fed automatically twice. Belka was two years old during the expedition and weighed almost five kilos. Strelka was slightly older and weighed over a kilo more. The two animals are said to have been selected especially for space travel based on their calm and balanced nature.

Pupniks

For the two dogs it was just one space journey, but they did not disappear into anonymity. Until their deaths, the cosmonaut dogs were regularly seen. After the space trip, Strelka got six puppies from the dog Pushok, who was involved in several Russian space experiments on the ground but was never launched into space herself. One of their puppies was gifted to Caroline Kennedy by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1961, the daughter of John F. Kennedy. She named the animal Pushinka. The new addition got on well with Kennedy’s own dog Charlie. From this ‘bond’ four new puppies were born. Kennedy sometimes jokingly referred to these animals as “pupniks,” referring to the Soviets’ Sputnik program. The press spoke of a Cold War romance.

Belka and Strelka were set up after their deaths. They are now on display at the Cosmonaut Museum in Moscow. In 2010, Google spent a day with a modified logo on the space journey of the two Russian dogs.

Short video about Belka and Strelka: