Why Soviets Sent Dogs to Space While Americans Used Primates
The cosmonaut ran away a day before his flight. The training had been grueling and confusing. The food was bad. The cosmonaut hadn’t signed up for this at all.
It couldn’t have: It was a dog.
The researchers at the Institute of Aviation Medicine in Moscow rushed to find a replacement. They plucked a stray dog off the street and named it ZIB, a Russian acronym that means “substitute for missing Bobik,” a common name for a small dog. The mutt was placed inside a capsule, strapped to a rocket, and blasted to the edge of space. It returned in one piece.
This historic flight happened in September 1951. The Soviet Union was developing a program to launch men into orbit, and dogs were their test subjects. On the other side of the world, the United States was carrying out similar biomedical
