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Space exploration has been populating the solar system with manmade hardware for half a century, and last month marked the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the planet’s first artificial satellite. But an even more significant breakthrough occurred less than a month later, on Nov. 3, 1957, when space hardware began carrying life forms into long-duration orbits.
This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of that milestone mission — the Russian Sputnik 2 launch that put a dog named Laika into orbit. Most of the remembrances of "Muttnik" may focuse solely on the first dog in space and her sad fate. But in the annals of the expansion of earthly life to the universe beyond, the full story is much more profound.
