Before Humans, We Sent Fruit Flies, a Dog, and Two Tortoises Into Space

Before any human left the planet, a strange menagerie went first. Space exploration’s earliest pioneers had wings, fur, and shells.

The first animals in space (1947): fruit flies. The United States loaded them onto a captured German V-2 rocket to test whether living things could survive the radiation of high altitude. The rocket climbed past 100 km, the capsule parachuted down, and the flies were recovered alive. Life could, at least briefly, endure space.

The first animal to orbit Earth (1957): a dog named Laika, aboard the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 2. A stray found on the streets of Moscow, she became the first living creature to circle the planet. Her mission was a landmark — and a tragedy: the technology to return safely from orbit didn’t yet exist, and Laika did not survive. Decades later, Russian scientists involved expressed open regret. Laika is now memorialized in Moscow, honored as a pioneer who proved a living being could survive launch and weightlessness.

The animal roster that followed reads like a surreal ark:

• Monkeys and chimpanzees — Ham the chimp tested the Mercury capsule before Alan Shepard flew it
• Dogs — Belka and Strelka orbited and came home safely in 1960; Strelka later had puppies, one gifted to the Kennedy family
• The first creatures to circle the Moon (1968): two tortoises aboard the Soviet Zond 5, along with wine flies and mealworms — they looped the Moon and splashed down before any Apollo astronaut made the trip
• Since then: mice, frogs, spiders, jellyfish, and more, each teaching us how bodies cope with weightlessness

These animals didn’t volunteer, and the ethics are genuinely uncomfortable by modern standards — a discomfort worth sitting with rather than glossing over. What they bought was knowledge that made human spaceflight survivable. Every astronaut who has ever safely returned owes a debt to a fruit fly, a street dog, and two tortoises who went into the dark first.