Dogs in Space

The Cosmonauts exhibition features the first canine space travellers. Visitors can see the type of Sputnik cabin Laika the dog lived in during her brief spaceflight in 1957. It also celebrates the flight of Belka and Strelka, whose safe return to Earth in 1960 paved the way for Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering human flight one year later.

But from the late 1940s through to the present day all manner of plants, seeds, microbes, creatures and animals have been launched into space. This talk from Doug Millard, Senior Curator of Cosmonauts, looks at what was sent and why, with particular focus on the Soviet and Russian space programmes.