❛❛ Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness ❜❜

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I'm sure you have heard of Laika before, however, if you haven't, she was one of the first animals in space and the first to orbit the earth. She was a stray mongrel picked up from the streets of Moscow, Russia, approximately three years old at that time.

She was subjected to cruel "training" that included being spun in a centrifuge, confined to a pressure chamber, and locked inside progressively smaller cages to adapt them to the confines of the tiny cabin of Sputnik 2.

Before the launch one of the mission scientists took Laika home to play with his children. In a book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine, Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote, "Laika was quiet and charming...I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live."

Before leaving for the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a surgery was conducted to route the cables from the transmitters to the sensors that would measure breathing, pulse, and blood pressure. And just prior to liftoff on 3 November 1957, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Laika's fur was sponged in a weak ethanol solution and carefully groomed, while iodine was painted onto the areas where sensors would be placed to monitor her bodily functions.

One of the technicians preparing the capsule before final liftoff said, "After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch, we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight."

During the launch, her pulse shot up to three times its normal rate and she was so terrified that it remained elevated for an extended time. Temperatures inside the tiny spacecraft quickly soared, and within hours, she cooked to death-all alone and in severe pain.

Over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2, including Laika's remains, disintegrated during re-entry on 14 April 1958.

What Laika was subjected to was cruel and inexcusable. Even Oleg Gazenko-one of the lead scientists who worked with dogs used in the space program-thought so, admitting, "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it."

"Laika," she would say, "the first dog in space. She died of heat and stress after a few hours. She was rescued from an animal center, she must have thought she was going to a home, to a family, and instead they sent her to the loneliest death in the world."
- Kate Atkinson

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In order to commemorate Laika's death on 3 Novermber 2023, Friday, the Mellonia Community would like to invite all of you to create a small token in her memory. All formats are accepted, be it graphics, video edits, songs, drawings, poems or any other forms of writing.

Be sure to submit all your entries by 1 November 2023, Wednesday, either through the community dms or via email ([email protected]).

Let us all come together to remember and honour Laika, the dog who sacrificed her life in vain in the name of Science.

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Written by Dark_Ghostie

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
https://www.peta.org/blog/60-years-ago-laika-died-in-space-sputnik-2/#:~:text=What%20Laika%20was%20subjected%20to,'t%20have%20done%20it.%E2%80%9D