As Sputnik II struck a path over the continents, the Soviet Union announced to the world the successful launch and orbit of a living being. As with any news from afar during this time, the initial hours offered inconsistent reports, which were updated as more information came in. Once the West came to understand that the satellite carried a dog, the technological achievements the Soviets were lauding were brushed aside. Never mind that the rocket had lifted over 1,100 pounds into space and so could therefore send a nuclear warhead to America or anywhere else. Never mind that sending an animal into space meant the Soviets would soon be able to send a man into space. Never mind that, as Korolev had claimed, the way to the stars really was open. What was the dog’s name, people all over the world wanted to know, and how would it get back home?
Western media considered that the Soviet space dog program had launched dogs into space before and returned them using parachutes. Some had been featured alive and well at press conferences. Some had even given birth to litters of puppies. Perhaps the Soviets would bring the dog home under a parachute or using some other method yet unknown. Perhaps the dog was going to be all right. Other media reports doubted it could come back at all. The spacecraft was in orbit, so how could they get it down? The world stood anxiously by, hoping, even praying, for the dog’s safe return.
As Laika made her first and then second orbit, her capsule began to heat up. The data coming into the Soviet ground stations indicated that she was agitated, anxious, moving about, possibly barking. The forced-air cooling system inside the capsule was not keeping pace with the sources of heat: the spent rocket body still attached to the satellite, the electrical systems, the sun, and heat from Laika herself. But there was nothing anyone on the ground could do about it. Some sources indicate that thermal insulation protecting Laika’s capsule was damaged, which could have happened when the fairing separated from the satellite. Such damage isn’t unheard of, as in the case of the damaged heat tiles on space shuttle Columbia in 2003, which led to its destruction on reentry. Both Gazenko and Kotovskaya point to the sun as a major factor in heating Sputnik II. Due to its elliptical orbit, the satellite “spent longer in the sun than had been planned,” Gazenko said in an interview in Space Dogs, “and it began gradually to heat up.” In her article, Kotovskaya writes that the “temperature control system inside the capsule was designed so that, while orbiting the Earth, the satellite [would] make it in the shade at times” and cool down. “Unfortunately, the satellite orbit came to be much elongated, elliptical, and most of the time it was in the sunlight.”
According to NASA, the temperature range outside the ISS can be as cold as -250 degrees Fahrenheit (on the shady side of Earth), and as hot as 250 degrees Fahrenheit (on the sunny side). The cooling and heating system onboard the space station must be able to manage these extremes. When astronauts work outside the station, performing an “extravehicular activity,” also known as a spacewalk, their space suits too must be able to manage this temperature range. Even so, they sense these extreme temperatures through the suit. Temperature control for biological habitats in orbit is an ongoing challenge even in the twenty-first century, so it is not surprising that the Soviets didn’t get this quite right on their first try.
Dogs do not manage heat well. Normal body temperature range for dogs is 101 to 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything above that will cause an increase in heart rate and respiration (excessive panting), restlessness complicated by lethargy, and possibly vomiting and diarrhea. A body temperature of 106 degrees is often the line between life and death. If a dog’s body temperature rises to that level, it will likely die, and die soon if it cannot cool down. Dogs sweat only from a gland in the bottom of their feet, which is why some dogs will stand in cool water, or in their water dish, after vigorous exercise in warm weather. They also pant, gassing off heat and circulating cooling air through their mouth and nose and over their tongue. But even better than sweating from their feet and panting is to find protection and relief from the heat in cool water, in shade, or indoors.
John Smith, a veterinarian in Texas who allowed me to observe him performing both a spay and a neuter surgery, told me that heat exhaustion can become critical in dogs very quickly. If you are going to save a dog in heat distress, Smith said, you have to bring their temperature down rapidly, usually by immersing the dog in an ice bath. The dog is then very weak, vulnerable, and highly sensitive to temperature. Once cooled, the dog must be removed from the ice bath and stabilized, or else its temperature will continue to fall and the dog will die going in the other direction. If the dog can’t cool down, either on its own or with help, it will become increasingly lethargic and disoriented, fall into a coma-like state, and die. It doesn’t take long, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, Smith told me, depending on how hot it is and how fit the dog is, and so how efficient it is at cooling itself. Humidity increases the heat challenge and the process can move along more rapidly. I asked Smith what dying from heat feels like for a dog. He looked at me for a moment and said, “Pain.”
After three times around the Earth, the temperature in Laika’s capsule had climbed to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and possibly as high as 109 degrees. Shortly after that, the data from Laika’s sensors stopped coming in. There was no sign of respiration or pulse, no sign of anything except the satellite itself, streaking across the sky, crossing continents in minutes, speeding faster than anything humans had ever built. The Soviets celebrated the Revolution and the state that manufactured it, a miracle really, the satellite, the flight of the first living being in space, the new religion of science and technology that had so elevated the Soviet Union, at least in those days and months, to the status of the greatest nation on Earth.
I have imagined Laika in her capsule speeding around the planet in the mostly dark, the unseen immensity of the cosmos surrounding her. She would have started panting as the temperature rose, a little at first, then heavily as her temperature rose with the temperature of the capsule, her heart rate rising too, her eyes closing with the cooling action of her panting as she struggled to manage the heat. The more she panted, the more she raised the humidity inside the capsule and in turn the temperature, overwhelming the cooling and air regeneration system—a greenhouse effect. She could not move much, seated there in that pod, wires pulled out from beneath her skin, whirling through space. Seated there, her eyes began to close in her growing lethargy, and an agitation too rising in her with the temperature, because as a young dog she still possessed a great deal of energy, and yet she could do nothing about that, nothing to quiet the heat, to end the threat she felt coming on. Her thirst would have been immense. She could not move away from the heat or seek shelter from it, the shade of a tree perhaps or the sanctuary of her home. Perhaps she wanted for some of that space dog food, that gelatinous glob set before her at the feeding tin because it had given her a little relief. But I imagine that her appetite left her as the temperature climbed, and if she had had more food in those last moments, she would not have touched it. All she could do was sit there, her eyes falling heavy and closing, not from the action of her panting now but because she was drifting in and out of a melancholic delirium that settled in, her eyes filling with the flashes of light that come in the darkness in space, and her head no longer in her control, floating on its stem, her paws stretched out before her to the front of the capsule just a few inches from the shores of the universe. Then Laika fell into a coma from which she would never awake. And that was all.