#72 The space pioneers from Earth weren’t humans, what? That’s right, long before humans launched into space, there were a whole team of dogs, monkeys, chimps, insects and more, who rode rockets to sp
Send us a text When Yuri Gagarin blasted into orbit in 1961 to become the first human in space, he was already 14 years behind the first animals from Earth. The fruit flies that were flew to space in 1947 were just the first of many different animals in the decade and a half before Gagarin’s orbital flight that were used to test equipment and living things’ capacity to survive and work in weightlessness. There were primates, dogs, mice and rabbits that crewed orbital and suborbital test fligh...