In 1968 a turtle became the first living being to fly around the moon.
In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into outer space. Before him, however, a few heroic animals had paved the way for extraterrestrial exploration.
Monkeys, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, mice, flies and fruit flies, spiders and butterflies: their sacrifice – and perhaps courage – went largely unrecognized as they were launched into orbit in the name of scientific progress.
In June 1948, an American V-2 Blossom rocket was launched from the White Sands base in New Mexico, carrying a rhesus monkey named Albert I to an altitude of 63 km. There was little fanfare for this unsung space hero. He failed to survive the voyage.
The space race was always a theatre of fierce technological competition between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. While American scientists were conducting their trials, the Russians too were working throughout the 1950s on numerous space experiments.
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In 1968 a turtle became the first living being to fly around the moon.
In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into outer space. Before him, however, a few heroic animals had paved the way for extraterrestrial exploration.
