Belka and Strelka: the dogs who orbited Earth and came home

Part 1

Who were Belka and Strelka

Belka and Strelka were strays, picked up from the streets of Moscow by Soviet space program researchers. Researchers preferred dogs like them because mongrels were tougher and handled stress better than pedigree dogs. Belka's name means squirrel, or whitey, in Russian, and Strelka's name means little arrow. They became international celebrities within days of their flight.

They were part of a wider group of Soviet space dogs, which by 1961 numbered at least thirteen animals launched toward orbit. That group included Laika, who flew in 1957, and Bars and Lisichka, who died in a launch failure in 1960. Belka and Strelka were chosen to fly on the mission that followed that failed launch.

Part 2

The mission that made them famous

Belka and Strelka launched on 19 August 1960 aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, known in the West as Sputnik 5. The spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying a crowded cabin of passengers besides the two dogs, including dozens of mice, two rats, a grey rabbit, flies, plants and fungi. The capsule circled Earth 17 times over about 25 hours. When the recovery team opened the hatch, every passenger, dogs included, was alive and in good health. Belka and Strelka became the first living creatures to survive an orbital flight around Earth.

• Test life-support systems designed to keep living creatures alive in orbit.
• Study the physiological effects of spaceflight on living organisms.
• Prove that a spacecraft could safely reenter the atmosphere and be recovered.

Part 3

How this flight differed from Laika's

You might already know the story of Laika, the first animal in space. Laika launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957, but that spacecraft had no way to bring her home. Her capsule was not built for reentry, and she died during the flight. Sputnik 5 was different, since engineers built it specifically to test reentry and recovery, the systems needed to bring a person home safely.

Belka and Strelka's success did not come easily. Earlier in 1960, two other dogs, Bars and Lisichka, died when their rocket exploded shortly after launch. The safe return of Belka and Strelka helped pave the way for the first human spaceflight. Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth less than a year later, in April 1961.

Part 4

What happened to them after landing

After they landed, both dogs recovered normally. Strelka later had a litter of puppies with a dog named Pushok, and one of them was named Pushinka. At a state dinner in Vienna in June 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy asked Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev about Strelka's puppies, and he later sent Pushinka to the White House as a gift.

Before Pushinka was allowed to join the Kennedy family, security staff examined her at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to make sure she was not carrying a hidden listening device. She turned out to be free of any such device, and she later had puppies of her own with a Kennedy family dog named Charlie. You can imagine how strange it must have felt to hand over a puppy for that kind of inspection.

Part 5

Their legacy in science and culture

After they died, their bodies were preserved and put on display at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. Their image appeared on a Russian postage stamp released in 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary of their flight. A Russian animated film about them, called Belka and Strelka: Star Dogs, was also released in 2010.

Their flight helped pave the way for preparing living organisms, and eventually people, for spaceflight. For you, their story is a reminder that early space exploration relied on ordinary strays doing something extraordinary.