In the late 1950s, Moscow’s streets were full of stray dogs that adapted to freezing nights and scarce food. One small mixed‑breed stood out to Soviet researchers for her calm nature and size. She was ...

On November 3, 1957, a Soviet space dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth. Laika was a 3-year-old stray husky-spitz mix from the streets of Moscow, and she was recruited by the Soviet ...

In March, I visited the Lowell Observatory — the astronomical research site where Pluto was first discovered — in Flagstaff, Arizona. I stood in line to squint through telescopes at Jupiter and the ...

Sixty-eight years ago, on November 3, 1957, the world witnessed a historic yet heartbreaking moment when a small stray dog from Moscow, named Laika, became the first living creature to orbit Earth.

Laika, a stray dog from Moscow, became the first living creature to orbit Earth aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957. Her one-way mission, intended to gather data on life in space, tragically ended within hours ...

Kai Cheng Thom, illus. by Kai Yun Ching. Arsenal Pulp, $18.95 (40p) ISBN 978-1-55152-862-5 Based on Russian space explorations during the 1950s that used dogs as experimental passengers, Thom’s story ...

Laika: The space pioneer who opened the cosmos The Space Race between superpowers captured global imagination during the 1950s, but few participants faced stakes as ultimate as a small mixed-breed dog ...

Space Dogs tells the heartbreaking, mind-blowing true story of Laika and the Chief Designer -- a stray dog and the top-secret Russian scientist who sent her to space during the Cold War. Written and ...

Laika was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow. Soviet scientists chose to use Moscow strays since they assumed that such animals had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold ...