In November 1957, a stray dog from Moscow’s streets was strapped into Sputnik 2 and launched into orbit in a capsule never designed to come home — and Soviet officials claimed for 45 years that Laika had died painlessly after several days, until a scientist admitted in 2002 she had died within hours when the thermal control failed.
On 3 November 1957, a small mongrel dog named Laika lay strapped inside a pressurised capsule roughly the…
