09/18/2025
🌌 67 years ago, Laika was sent into space.
Today, I feel a duty to commemorate her. Not out of nostalgia, not out of mere scientific curiosity—but out of respect, and for that guilt that still weighs on humanity.
Because Laika wasn't just an experiment.
She was life. A presence. Innocence offered to a stranger.
Her real name was Kuderzhavka, which means "slightly wrinkled" in Russian.
But the world knew her as Laika, "The Barker."
She was a husky, half-terrier, picked up on the icy streets of Moscow. She was just three years old. She was chosen for her quiet, obedient, and resilient nature... as if these qualities could justify the doom that awaited her: to die alone in space.
On November 3, 1957, at 2 a.m., Laika departed aboard Sputnik 2.
The capsule contained food, water, and padded walls. But there was no plan for return. From the start, this journey was nothing more than a death sentence in progress.
Some say she survived for seven hours. Others speak of four days.
Alone all the time. Always in silence.
Suspended in a metal cage, as the Earth continued to spin beneath her—farther away.
It orbited 2,570 times around our planet.
And on April 14, 1958, the capsule disintegrated in mid-air. Consumed by fire, by gravity, By forgetting.
Laika didn't ask to be a hero.
She didn't choose to represent science or the space race.
She was just a little wandering dog with eyes seeking affection—and a body transformed into a tool.
✨ That's why, year after year, I continue to tell her story.
Because it reminds us that all progress is not innocent,
and that often our victories were written in the suffering of those who couldn't say "no."
Laika, we haven't forgotten you.
As long as someone speaks your name, it won't be news.
It will be a memory. It will be familiar.
It will be a reminder of what we don't need to repeat.
