Hmm oh hi James Foley here the author of
Stellarphant a new picture book and uh we're talking about the true history of animals
in space here now we've got a question from Rex Gundagai. Now Rex asks what was the first dog in
space? Good question Rex there was actually two on a mission together their names were Tsygan
and Dezik and they were Russian dogs they were Soviet space pups they went into space in August
in 1951. Went up to space to about 110 kilometres and then came straight back do
wn they didn't go
into orbit but still pretty amazing achievement for two little dogs yeah then the first earthling
in orbit was another dog you've probably heard of called Laika. Laika this dog here little jack
russell 1957 they went into orbit around the earth now all these dogs that the soviet space
program used they were all stray dogs they thought that stray dogs who had lived on the streets who
would live through cold Moscow winters they would be more resilient when they went into spa
ce it
probably makes sense because if you sent someone's little lap dog pomeranian into space they might
not really be used to that sort of treatment so these dogs uh were very tough and very strong
and uh they were basically the heroes of the early space program now there's another dog that I
really like the story of uh it was a dog that was never meant to go to space about a month after
those first two dogs went into space there was another mission and there was supposed to be these
two
dogs on there one I'm not sure the name of but the other one was Bobbik and Bobbik
went missing a day or two before the launch and so they had to keep doing the launch and
the scientists didn't have a backup dog and the morning of the launch they're kind of freaking
out and going what are we going to do I'm doing the wrong accent I'll try and get some Russian in
a second but they went what are we going to do we haven't got um you know Bobby what are we going to
do we got to find some other
dog like we haven't trained anything else what are we going to do and
they found a stray dog on the base running around and went that's about the same size as Bobbik this
is perfect we could put that one onto the rocket this poor dog got put into the rocket got sent
into space and came back down and survived this poor dog woke up that morning and probably
thought you know I'm just gonna like sniff some trees I might get some rubbish I might play with
some dogs chasing squirrels but no he en
ded up going into space probably came back and went
guys guys I've just been to space and probably no one understood I believed him now they called
this dog zib zed ib which in Russian stands for the substitute for missing dog Bobbik that is
true that happened you can look it up thank you for your questions Rex if you've got any other
questions about the true history of animals in space from my books Stellarphant check them in the
comments we'll do our best to answer them later on
Comments