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Here, Laika, here girl! Finding the name of the first dog in space was relatively easy -- we just had to know where to dig. We simply typed "first dog in space" (with quotation marks around the phrase) and were quickly rewarded with the answer. The first site listed couldn't have been more appropriate -- a subpage of the NASA web site. Unfortunately, the site was down the day we visited. The next site, however, found us barking up the right tree. Not only was Laika (nicknamed Mutnik) the first dog in space, she was the first living creature ever sent into space. She was aboard Sputnik 2, launched
on November 3, 1957, by the Soviet Union. Sadly, Laika died during her journey. We headed back to the search results to see if we could sniff out any more information and took a chance on a 1997 CNN article titled Mir Spacewalk Goes Smoothly. Near the end of the article, we learned that exactly forty years after the "caninenaut" was blasted into orbit, she was remembered by a plaque at the Moscow research center where she was trained.
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