In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Laika, a dog, into space aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. The part Siberian husky, a stray dog from Moscow, became a passenger in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' second artificial Earth satellite becoming the first animal to orbit Earth. Scientists on the ground used electrodes attached to her body to gather important information about the biological effects of space travel. She survived for several days, thanks to a sophisticated life-support system, but died after the batteries ran down. The Soviet Union later launched…