{"id":648771,"date":"2026-11-02T13:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T13:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/648771\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T13:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T13:34:14","slug":"an-icon-of-soviet-space-exploration-the-russian-stray-dog-that-beat-humans-into-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/648771\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;An icon of Soviet space exploration&#8217;: The Russian stray dog that beat humans into orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Paragraph-styles__ParagraphStyled-sc-ffb5f5ba-0 fqhmpl\">After the successful Sputnik I launch on 4 October 1957, which sent the world&#8217;s first man-made satellite into orbit, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev had ordered the new mission. &#8220;He said: &#8216;We didn&#8217;t believe you could launch a satellite before the Americans \u2013 but you did it,'&#8221; engineer Georgi Grechko, who worked on the launch team for Sputnik I and II, told the BBC in 2019. &#8220;&#8216;Now,&#8217; [Khruschev] said, and this was mid-October, &#8216;For the anniversary of the revolution on 7 November, I want you to launch something new.'&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the successful Sputnik I launch on 4 October 1957, which sent the world&#8217;s first man-made satellite into&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-648771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}