Apollo 13 Inspired Dog Names

Many people know that human beings weren’t the first animals into space. But many don’t know that monkeys, originally deemed the best test subjects (shortly after fruit flies, who didn’t provide significant enough data), were replaced just three years after the practice of sending animals into space had begun. 

Dogs were the ones who made their most significant substitutes — they were good candidates because they were less fidgety in flight. In the end, female dogs were preferred — their waste was easier to control and they possessed better overall temperaments — as were strays, as they were believed to be able to withstand the hardships of their missions better. It was also easier to fit two of them into a spacecraft, which was preferable, given that two subjects provided twice the data and better accuracy. 

The first canines to ever be suborbital astronauts were Dezik and Tsygan (“Gypsy”) and their first flight, which reached an altitude of just under 70 miles, was deemed a success, as the duo was recovered unharmed. Unfortunately, the second pair, Dezik and another dog named Lisa, perished after the parachute failed to deploy on re-entry. Afterward, Tsygan was adopted by Soviet physicist Anatolo Blagonravov. 

But even with mixed results, the scientists were not discouraged from continuing on with their mission. More than 15 different dogs were used over the next half decade, many of which saw numerous flights — one of note named Snowflake saw six flights alone. The results remained all over the board as technical issues kept some of the dogs grounded entirely, some had significant failures and perished during their missions, while others made considerable contributions, time and time again returning safely with more useful data. 

Perhaps the most famous of them all, however, was Laika, who was the first Earth-born creature in space orbit, November 3, 1957. Unfortunately, she died only five to seven hours into her flight from stress and overheating, of which remained unknown to the public until 2002 when those responsible showed public remorse for causing the death of a dog and extracting only sub-par data. 

Fortunately for dogs, dog-lovers, and scientists alike, one of their next missions, which launched in August of 1960, carried a pair of pups into orbit where they remained for one day before coming safely back to Earth — the first to survive orbital space flight (though they were also accompanied by rats, flies, mice, plants and fungi, all of whom also survived).