Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so Laika's survival was never expected. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure a micro-g environment, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments. Laika died within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002 instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six or, as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion. On 11 April 2008, Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika. A small monument in her honour was built near the military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space. It portrayed a dog standing on top of a rocket. She also appears on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow.Īfter the success of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wanted a spacecraft launched on 7 November 1957, the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. Construction had already started on a more sophisticated satellite, but it would not be ready until December this satellite would later become Sputnik 3. Meeting the November deadline meant building a new craft. Khrushchev specifically wanted his engineers to deliver a 'space spectacular', a mission that would repeat the triumph of Sputnik 1, stunning the world with Soviet prowess. Planners settled on an orbital flight with a dog. Soviet rocket engineers had long intended a canine orbit before attempting human spaceflight since 1951, they had lofted twelve dogs into sub-orbital space on ballistic flights, working gradually toward an orbital mission set for some time in 1958. To satisfy Khrushchev's demands, they expedited the orbital canine flight for the November launch. Her last microfiction book is Fenómenos de circo in 2011.Īccording to Russian sources, the official decision to launch Sputnik 2 was made on 10 or 12 October, leaving less than four weeks to design and build the spacecraft. Her complete short stories have been published as Que tengas una vida interesante (Buenos Aires, 2009). Her first four microfiction books have been published in Madrid in one volume: Cazadores de Letras, (Letter’s Hunters, 2009). and El peso de la tentación (The Weight of Temptation, 2007). Her other novels include Soy Paciente (Patient, 1980), Los amores de Laurita (Laurita's Loves,1984), which was made into a movie, La muerte como efecto secundario (Death as a Side Effect, 1997). Since then, she has received numerous national and international awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel El libro de los recuerdos(The Book of Memories, 1994). She went on to study at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires and worked as an advertising copywriter and journalist during the early stages of her career.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1951, Shua began her literary career at the young age of sixteen with the publication of El sol y yo (The Sun and I), a volume of poetry which received two literary prizes in 1967. Her award-winning works have been translated to many languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Islandic, Bulgarian, and Serbian, and her stories appear in anthologies throughout the world.

Ana María Shua has earned a prominent place in contemporary Argentine fiction with the publication of many books in nearly every genre: novels, short stories, short short stories, poetry, children's fiction, books of humor and Jewish folklore, anthologies, film scripts, journalistic articles, and essays.

Perra laika