Humans have a history of subjecting dogs to pain and indignity. We chain them up and interbreed them. We tie bows around their necks and teach them stupid tricks. But it’s difficult to imagine a fate more surreal and sad than that endured by Laika, a little Russian mongrel who was shot into orbit on November 3, 1957, becoming the first dog in space.

It was 10 years into the Cold War, and the Soviet Union had scored a coup with the launch, in October 1957, of Sputnik 1, the first satellite to enter orbit. Sputnik’s success triggered an existential crisis in the West, which regarded Soviet ascendancy as a foretaste of atomic doom. Hoping to press the advantage, then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered his scientists to send up another Sputnik, and gave his engineers just one month to do it. Keen to test the effects of space on a living creature, the Soviets decided to load the satellite – Sputnik 2 – with a canine cosmonaut. The catch? The ship wouldn’t be capable of sustaining life for long or re-entering the atmosphere without burning up. The pooch would be on a one-way trip.

A team of “recruiters” began by collecting Moscow street dogs, which were thought to be strong and resilient. One dog stood out. They initially called her Kudryavka (Russian for “Little Curly”), but renamed her Laika (“Barker”) after a particularly vocal turn on state radio. Laika was small – just five kilograms – with inquiring eyes and a placid temperament. Vladimir Yazdovsky, the mission’s lead physician, described her as “quiet and charming”. In case she couldn’t perform, Laika had an understudy, another mutt named Albina.

Training was intense. The dogs were spun around in centrifuges, and subjected to loud noises and changes in air pressure. They were kept in small cages to accustom them to the satellite’s cramped conditions. Researchers strapped a sanitation device to their hindquarters. Prior to lift-off, Laika was fitted with electrodes to measure her blood pressure, heartbeat and breathing. Yazdovsky later wrote that before the launch, he took Laika home to play with his children: “I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left.”

Sputnik 2, with Laika inside, blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The G-forces soon reached five times ground-level gravity. Laika panicked: as the rocket’s speed hit 28,800 kmh, her heart began beating three times faster than normal and her breathing rate quadrupled. Just hours into the flight, the satellite’s cooling system failed, and the temperature rose to 40 degrees. For decades, the Soviets insisted that Laika survived for days but, in 2002, Russian scientists admitted that all signs of life ceased after seven hours. Laika probably died of overheating. The satellite orbited earth for another five months, with her body inside.

Laika’s story became a parable for the ages. She was lauded, mourned and commodified: there were Laika postcards, stamps and chocolates. But what remains is the image of a dog, trapped in a capsule, 2000 kilometres above earth, dying terrified and alone. In 1998, Laika’s trainer, Oleg Gazenko, told journalists, “The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We didn’t learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a dog.”

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