YORICK
The first living creature launched and successfully recovered, Yorick, a monkey (breed unknown), lifted off from the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico aboard an Aerobee booster on September 20, 1951. Accompanied by eleven mice, Yorick attained an altitude of 45 miles.
PATRICIA/MIKE
Two Philippine monkeys launched aboard an Aerobee from Holloman on May 22, 1952. They were watched on a video camera as they soared to a height of 35.8 miles and at speeds of up to 1,988 mph. Mike was strapped in a prone position, Patricia upright; two mice were set loose in a clear holding drum, where they became weightless. All the animals survived. Patricia and Mike retired to Washington’s National Zoological Park.
LAIKA (Barker)
A three-year-old Russian mongrel bitch, mostly Siberian husky, was launched with Sputnik 2 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on November 3, 1957. She had been found as a stray on the streets of Moscow, and was also known to her handlers as Kudryavka (Little Curly); American pressmen dubbed her “Muttnik.” Transmissions lasted seven days, until oxygen ran out, and her remains were incinerated when Sputnik 2 reentered after 2,370 orbits in 103 days. In the statue honoring lives lost in the Soviet space program at Star City in Moscow, Laika peers out from behind a group of cosmonauts.
GORDO
A squirrel monkey launched aboard a Jupiter AM-13 booster by the US Army on December 13, 1958, part of a panicky American response to the success of the Sputniks. The flight was completed successfully, but Gordo drowned when the flotation device in the capsule’s nose cone failed.
SAM
A rhesus monkey, named for School of Aviation Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, traveled in a Mercury capsule on Little Joe test flight from Wallops Island on December 4, 1959. Experienced four minutes of weightlessness in suborbital flight reaching 55 miles. Returned to the laboratory, he reportedly hugged his unrelated rhesus monkey colleague Miss Sam, who herself undertook a brief 12-mile flight a month later to test the Mercury capsule’s escape mechanism.
BELKA (Squirrel)/STRELKA (Little Arrow)
Two dogs launched with Sputnik 5 from Baikonur Cosmodrome on August 19, 1960. The second trial of the Vostok capsule which would carry Yuri Gagarin into space the following April; it also carried forty mice, two rats, and several plants. The dogs were ejected after eighteen orbits in a pressurized capsule that was successfully recovered. Strelka later gave birth to six puppies, one of which was given to US president John F. Kennedy.
HAM
A four-year-old American chimpanzee launched in Mercury capsule atop a Redstone booster, from Cape Canaveral on January 31, 1961. Named for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center in New Mexico, and also for its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Hamilton Blackshear. The flight required Ham to manipulate control levers in return for banana pellets, which he did, despite a stressful flight reaching speeds of almost 6,300 mph, involving almost seven minutes of weightlessness and overshooting the recovery area by 124 miles. Ham retired from duties on April 2, 1963, to Washington’s National Zoological Park.
CHERNUSHKA (Blackie)
Launched with Sputnik 9 from Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 9, 1961, Chernushka, a black dog, was successfully recovered the same day. The fourth trial of the Vostok capsule also carried a dummy cosmonaut, a guinea pig, and several mice.
ZVEZDOCHKA (Little Star)
Launched with Sputnik 10 from Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 25, 1961. Fifth and final trial of Vostok capsule. Zvezdochka, a white dog, was successfully recovered after one orbit. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the same feat eighteen days later. With Laika, Belka, Strelka, and Chernushka, Zvezdochka has been featured on a Bulgarian stamp.
ENOS
The first primate in orbit, an American chimpanzee launched in a Mercury capsule atop an Atlas 5 booster from Cape Canaveral on November 29, 1961. The flight was aborted after two of a planned three orbits due to system problems, though Enos discharged all his duties successfully. His fondness for masturbating, which scientists tried to prevent with a catheter, and with which he delighted his press conference, earned him the nickname “Enos the Penis.” He died a year later of an unrelated infection. John Glenn became the first American human in orbit, on February 20, 1962.
FELIX
A stray black-and-white tomcat plucked from the streets of Paris by France’s Centre d’Enseignment et de Recherches de Medecine Aeronautique (CERMA) and launched in the nose cone of a Veronique AGI sounding rocket from the Hammaguir Testing Range in Algeria on October 18, 1963. Felix was recovered successfully after reaching a height of almost 125 miles, but another cat launched six days later perished. (Some sources give Felix as Felicette.)
VERTEROK (Little Wind)/UGOLYOK (Little Piece of Coal)
Russian dogs launched aboard the biosatellite Kosmos 110 (also known as Voskhod 3) from Baikonur Cosmodrome on February 22, 1966. Their twenty-two-day flight, observed by video and biomedical telemetry, remains the non-human endurance record, and was not surpassed by humans until the first Skylab flight (twenty-eight days) in July 1974.
Other creatures that have traveled in space: fish, frogs, newts, rats, snails, spiders, and worms.