![]() The story of Laika is best followed through the contemporary international press of the time rather than through later summations or revisions. ![]() ![]() And that was the name that stuck, at least among those who didn’t insist on calling her Muttnik. Then it was reported that she was a laika, with a small L, denoting a small-boned breed related to the Eskimo. As news of the mission started to spread from Moscow, she was initially known to the media simply as ‘the dog’, except in France where she became ‘Frisette’. Her trainers gave her several names, including Kudryavka, Zhuchka and even Limonchik – a male name – but by now the program had settled exclusively on females, whose suits for obvious reasons were easier to design. The nameless female, of two or three years of age, joined other trainees in a facility that had prepared other dogs for previous sub-orbital flights. Unlike its US counterpart, the Soviet space program preferred dogs to monkeys and apes, and strays to other types of dogs due to their proven ability to survive in harsh conditions. Laika was a stray dog recruited on the streets of Moscow. Even if – as we now know – by then she was already dead. That speech was given much greater force and weight by the presence of a dog in space. However, if we look more closely, this is actually the same anniversary: the mission of Sputnik 2 was itself planned in great haste to coincide with the revolutionary celebrations of 7 November 1957, and with the major speech calling for world peace that Nikita Khrushchev planned to give in front of a special session of the Supreme Soviet. This year was both the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the sixtieth anniversary of the launch into space of the dog who came to be known as Laika.
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