She also appears on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow. In 2008, a small monument to Laika depicting her standing atop a rocket was unveiled near the military research facility in Moscow that prepared her flight. Laika, whose name translated to Barker, was a stray husky-spitz mix who was found on the streets of Moscow. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002 instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six or, as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion. A street dog named Laika became the lop-eared icon of the Soviet space program when she was blasted into orbit in 1957. Researchers selected Laika for the Sputnik 2 project nine days before the launch date. Laika died within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R ‑7 sustainer to separate from the payload. Laika and five other female pooches came from the streets of Moscow before they started training for their missions. The scientist further revealed that Laika orbited the earth four times only. However, in 2002 one of the scientists in the Sputnik 2 space program, Dimitri Malashenkov, stated that Laika only lasted a few hours in space. The experiment, which monitored Laika's vital signs, aimed to prove that a living organism could survive being launched into orbit and continue to function under conditions of weakened gravity and increased radiation, providing scientists with some of the first data on the biological effects of spaceflight. Other reports claimed that Laika’s death was caused by asphyxiation after the batteries to her life support system failed. Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and animal flights were viewed by engineers as a necessary precursor to human missions.
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