The dog Laika became the first living creature to come into space. He traveled on the Sputnik 2 satellite launched by the Soviet Union. It was launched to demonstrate the conditions of survival by overcoming the atmosphere. He died a few hours after overheating. Laika was a street dog who became a world symbol.

A month earlier, on October 4, 1957, the Soviets, with the Sputnik satellite, the first man-made satellite to space, advanced the Americans in their space career and confirmed it with Laika. The game was to be closed with the Gagarin flight of 1961.