{"id":225094,"date":"2025-10-19T12:26:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/225094\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T12:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:26:15","slug":"oct-18-1963-felicette-becomes-the-1st-cat-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/225094\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct. 18, 1963: F\u00e9licette Becomes the 1st Cat in Space! >^..^"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 18, 1963, a cat went to space! F\u00e9licette was a French “catstronaut”<\/a> who became the first and only feline to fly to space.<\/p>\n

While the U.S. and Soviet Union were busy launching primates, dogs and humans, the French decided to join the space race by launching a cat. F\u00e9licette, a stray tuxedo cat from the streets of Paris, was a substitute for another cat named Felix, who somehow escaped on launch day.<\/p>\n

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F\u00e9licette, the first cat to fly into space, is seen in its custom “spacecraft seat.” (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n

So F\u00e9licette went where no cat had ever gone before. She boarded a French V\u00e9ronique AG1 rocket and soared 130 miles above the Earth before safely parachuting back down.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Luckily, F\u00e9licette made it home alive and well, unlike many of the other animal astronauts that flew during the space race.<\/p>\n

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Oct. 18, 1963, a cat went to space! F\u00e9licette was a French “catstronaut” who became the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-225094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}