The rocket went up, a long line of white into the blue. A million-horsepower engine pushed the rocket higher and higher, hitting a top velocity of 2,610 miles per hour. The dogs’ heart rates shot up. The g-force of acceleration bore down on them, their bodies now weighing five times more than on Earth. They could not hold up their heads. The rocket reached an apex altitude of more than 100 kilometers or 62 miles, just above the Karman line. And then a sudden and calming relief as the dogs entered microgravity. Their heart rates slowed and returned to normal. Secured inside the capsule, Dezik and Tysgan did not float about the pressurized cabin, but they were nearly weightless for four full minutes.
On the ground, the party of onlookers watched, as in the distance an object could be seen falling back to Earth. It struck the ground hard and exploded in a ball of flame. It was not the capsule, however, but the cast-off rocket body, the remaining fuel igniting and burning on impact. The spacecraft that carried the dogs was still in the sky, turning over the smooth curve of its path, and then down it came, faster and faster. A white parachute appeared in the sky. At this distance, the observers watched the chute like a tiny paper toy unfurling in the blue, slowing the descent of the spacecraft, slowing it, as down, down it fell.
Yazdovsky had directed the party to remain at a safe distance until the spacecraft landed, but the weirdness of it, the novelty, the joyful excitement was too much to bear. Two little dogs were inside that spacecraft, and they had just made a trip to outer space. Were they alive? Were they injured? Was their air running out? What was it like to ride that rocket into space? As the team ran for their cars, the invited guests ran after them, and in a torrent of gas and dust the whole lot went shooting across the desert to the landing site.
Alexander Seryapin approached the spacecraft first. He was especially fond of Tysgan, he admitted in an interview for the film Space Dogs, and now that she had been to space and back, he was desperate to know what had become of her. He leaned in to look through the window into the capsule. “Our animals were alive,” he said in the interview. “They were sitting calmly. We released the dogs and took off their sensors. We gave them sausage to eat, and water. Everyone was very happy, especially Sergei Korolev. He was normally such a serious man, so I was surprised when he grabbed one of the dogs and ran around the [spacecraft].” All the reports concur that Dezik had no identifiable injuries or ill effects from her ride, and Tysgan had but a scrape on her belly where the capsule had caved in against her upon landing. While the US was just completing the Albert flights and killing one monkey after another, the Soviet Union had launched its first dogs into space and recovered both alive.
A week later Dezik flew again into space, this time with a dog named Lisa, Russian for “fox.” The rocket went up, the spacecraft came down, but this time no white chute appeared above the horizon. The spacecraft kept falling until the Earth came up hard beneath it. Reports say that a pressure sensor damaged by the vibration of the rocket engines prevented the braking chute from deploying, a mechanical failure that killed both dogs.
When Anatoli Blagonravov (1895–1975), the head of the Commission for the Investigation of the Upper Atmosphere, heard about the death of Dezik and Lisa, he grieved deeply. Blagonravov would later become a towering figure in the Soviet space program. Among other achievements, he was instrumental in negotiating the 1972 agreement between the US and the Soviet Union that called for the development of spacecraft built by the two nations that would be capable of docking with each other. The 1975 Apollo/Soyuz Test Project (known as Soyuz/Apollo in Russia) is often cited as the end of the Space Race and so the beginning of cooperation in space between the US and USSR. But that hallmark event was still down the road. Blagonravov was crushed by the death of Lisa and Dezik, especially Dezik. He could not stand to think of Tsygan, Dezik’s former flight mate, flying again and maybe dying in a crash too. He announced to the team that Tsygan would retire and then promptly adopted her. According to Yazdovsky, Tysgan lived a long and easy life in Blagonravov’s Moscow home.
You might imagine them—this man so central to the Soviet space program and this little dog, one of the first in space—taking long lovely walks through the Moscow streets, maybe into Gorky Park, passing by the public fountains there, and the many people at their leisure.
Ryzhik (Ginger) and Smelaya (Courageous) were scheduled to fly out of Kapustin Yar on August 19, 1951. The day before launch, Smelaya cut loose from her handlers during her walk and ran off into the barren steppe. She bore similar markings as Tysgan (now living happily in retirement in Moscow), white with black patches over her eyes and much of her face. Her ears stood up, giving her the distinct look of a dog close to her wild ancestors. Out there in the steppe where Smelaya was last seen running, her wild ancestors waited for her, the golden jackal, an opportunist that would happily prey on a wayward space dog. Still, it was not unheard of for dogs to carouse with jackals, as hybrid jackal-dogs too roamed the desert. Summer temperatures might be hot during the day, but it would cool off at night. Still, the team came to understand that it was unlikely Smelaya would return. It was bad enough to lose her to the desert, but what complicated matters further was that space dogs were selected in compatible pairs for their flight missions. How would they find a replacement on short notice?
The next morning, launch day, Smelaya walked back into Kapustin Yar as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Where had she been? What had she been doing? How did she make it through the dangerous night? Whatever the answers, the team prepped and dressed her for flight, she flew, and she was recovered safely. Smelaya is likely the only dog in history to spend a night with jackals and fly into space the next morning.
Yazdovsky chose a dog named Neputevyy (Screw Up) and another named Bobik to fly on September 3, 1951. Like Smelaya, Bobik escaped from her handlers on a preflight walk and vanished into the steppe. The previous return of Smelaya gave the team some hope, but Bobik did not return and they were out of time. As the flight schedule demanded a replacement dog, Yazdovsky ordered that one be found. A lab technician suggested they fly one of the many stray dogs hanging around the mess hall at Kapustin Yar. The team agreed that this was not a bad idea. “So I put on a raincoat and off we went,” Seryapin said in the film Space Dogs. “We caught one of the dogs, about the same size as the runaway. We brought him in, washed, fed, and brushed him. [It isn’t certain whether the dog was male or if Seryapin is defaulting to the masculine pronoun.] We tried the sensors on him. The dog was absolutely calm. While we worked on him, he licked our hands. He was a very calm dog.” Even so, this calm dog had no training at all, and the team worried the flight alone might mean his death.
The rocket went up and came down just fine, and what about the dogs? “I looked into the hatch,” Seryapin said. “You know, I think my heart missed a beat. Both dogs were alive, and the new dog was absolutely calm…. When [Korolev] saw I was holding the new dog, he asked, ‘But which dog is this? Where did it come from? Why have I not seen it before? What’s its name?’” Seryapin explained what had happened. “Korolev petted the dogs as he always did,” Seryapin said, “and then he said, ‘Remember comrades that a time will come when our trade unions will offer ordinary people holidays in space. Well, here’s the first one.’” And he held the dog up in triumph.
Korolev named that dog ZIB (a Russian acronym for Zamena Ischeznuvshevo Bobik, or “the replacement for disappeared Bobik”). Blagonravov, perhaps much impressed by ZIB, took him home too, where he lived in happy retirement with Tysgan.