Animals in space originally served to test the survivability of spaceflight, before human spaceflights were attempted. Later, many species were flown to investigate various biological processes and the effects microgravity and space flight might have on them. Bioastronautics is an area of bioengineering research that spans the study and support of life in space. To date, seven national space programs have flown non-human animals into space: the United States, Soviet Union, France, Argentina, China, Japan and Iran.
A wide variety of non-human animals have been launched into space, including monkeys and apes, dogs, cats, tortoises, mice, rats, rabbits, fish, frogs, spiders, insects, and quail eggs (which hatched on Mir in 1990). The US launched the first living beings into space, with fruit flies surviving a 1947 flight, followed by primates in 1949. The Soviet space program launched multiple dogs into space, with the first sub-orbital flights in 1951, and first orbital flights in 1957.
Two tortoises and several varieties of plants were the first living beings to circle the Moon in September 1968 on the Zond 5 mission. In 1972, five mice nicknamed Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey orbited the Moon a record 75 times aboard command module America as part of the Apollo 17 mission.
Background In the 16th century German rocketry works suggested to use cats and birds as Animal-borne bombs.
Animals had been used in aeronautic exploration since 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers sent a sheep, a duck, and a rooster aloft in a hot air balloon to see if ground-dwelling animals could survive (the duck serving as the experimental control). In the early 19th century Claude Ruggieri launched animals with rockets.
The limited supply of captured German V-2 rockets led to the U.S. use of high-altitude balloon launches carrying fruit flies, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, frogs, goldfish and monkeys to heights of up to . These high-altitude balloon flights from 1947 to 1960 tested radiation exposure, physiological response, life support and recovery systems. The U.S. high-altitude manned balloon flights occurred in the same time frame, one of which also carried fruit flies.
Timeline
1940s The first animals sent into space were fruit flies aboard a U.S.-launched V-2 rocket on 20 February 1947 from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.UPPER AIR ROCKET SUMMARY V-2 NO. 20 . postwarv2.com The purpose of the experiment was to explore the effects of radiation exposure at high altitudes. The rocket reached in 3 minutes 10 seconds, past both the U.S. Air Force and the international 100 km definitions of the boundary of space. The Blossom capsule was ejected and successfully deployed its parachute. The fruit flies were recovered alive. Other V-2 missions also carried biological samples, including moss.
Albert II, a rhesus monkey, became the first monkey, first primate, and first mammal in space on 14 June 1949, in a U.S.-launched V-2, after the failure of the original Albert's mission on ascent. Albert I reached only altitude; Albert II reached about , but died on impact after a parachute failure.
Numerous monkeys of several species were flown by the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. Monkeys were implanted with sensors to measure vital signs, and many were under anesthesia during launch. The death rate among these monkeys was very high: about two-thirds of all monkeys launched in the 1940s and 1950s died on missions or soon after landing.
1950s
On 31 August 1950, the U.S. launched a mouse into space (137 km) aboard a V-2 (the Albert V flight, which, unlike the Albert I-IV flights, did not have a monkey), however, the animal died following descent because the parachute system failed."Top 10 Animal Astronauts" . Toptenz.net. The U.S. launched several other mice in the 1950s.
On 22 July 1951, the Soviet Union launched the R-1 IIIA-1 flight, carrying the dogs Tsygan (, "Gypsy" or "Țigan/Țagaur" in romani language) and Dezik () into space, but not into orbit. These two dogs were the first living higher organisms successfully recovered from a spaceflight. Both space dogs survived the flight, although Dezik would die on a subsequent flight. The U.S. launched mice aboard spacecraft later that year; however, they failed to reach the altitude for true spaceflight.
On 3 November 1957, the second-ever orbiting spacecraft carried the first animal into orbit, the dog Laika, launched aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2 spacecraft (nicknamed 'Muttnik' in the West). Laika died during the flight, as was expected because the technology to return spacecraft from orbit had not yet been developed. At least 10 other dogs were launched into orbit and numerous others on sub-orbital flights before the historic date of 12 April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
On 13 December 1958, a Jupiter IRBM, AM-13, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a United States Navy-trained South American squirrel monkey named Gordo on board. The nose cone recovery parachute failed to operate and Gordo was lost. Telemetry data sent back during the flight showed that the monkey survived the 10 g of launch, 8 minutes of weightlessness and 40 g of reentry at . The nose cone sank downrange from Cape Canaveral and was not recovered.
Monkeys Miss Able and Miss Baker became the first monkeys to survive spaceflight after their 1959 flight. On 28 May 1959, aboard Jupiter IRBM AM-18, were a American-born rhesus monkey, Able, from Independence, Kansas, and a squirrel monkey from Peru, Baker. The monkeys rode in the nose cone of the missile to an altitude of and a distance of down the Atlantic Missile Range from Cape Canaveral, Florida. They withstood forces 38 times the normal pull of gravity and were weightless for about 9 minutes. A top speed of was reached during their 16-minute flight. The monkeys survived the flight in good condition. Able died four days after the flight from a reaction to anesthesia, while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode. Baker was the center of media attention for the next several months as she was watched closely for any ill-effects from her space flight. She was even mated in an attempt to test her reproductive system."Space Monkey to be a Bride." New York Times:6. 14 August 1959. ProQuestWeb. 22 November 2015. Baker lived until 29 November 1984, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
On 2 July 1959, a launch of a Soviet R2 rocket, which reached , carried two space dogs and Marfusha, the first rabbit to go into space.
A 19 September 1959 launch, a Jupiter AM-23, carried two frogs and 12 mice but was destroyed during launch.
On 4 December 1959, a rhesus macaque Sam flew on the Little Joe 2 mission of Project Mercury to an altitude of .
1960s
On 19 August 1960 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 5 (also known as Korabl-Sputnik 2) which carried the dogs Belka and Strelka, along with a gray rabbit, 40 mice, 2 rats, and 15 flasks of fruit flies and plants.A brief History of Animals in Space . NASA It was the first spacecraft to carry animals into orbit and return them alive.Dogs , Space Online Today, 2004 One of Strelka's pups, Pushinka, bred and born after her mission, was given as a present to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961, and many descendants are known to exist.
The US sent three black mice: Sally, Amy, and Moe 1,000 km up and 8,000 km distance from Cape Canaveral on 13 October 1960 using an Atlas D 71D launch vehicle. The mice were retrieved from the nosecone near Ascension Island and were said to be in good condition.
On 31 January 1961, Ham, a chimpanzee, was launched into sub-orbital space in a Mercury capsule aboard a Redstone rocket to become the first great ape in space. Ham's mission was Mercury-Redstone 2. The chimpanzee had been trained to pull levers to receive rewards of banana pellets and avoid electric shocks. His flight demonstrated the ability to perform tasks during spaceflight. A little over three months later the United States sent Alan Shepard into space on a suborbital flight.
Enos became the first and only chimpanzee to reach Earth orbit when, on 29 November 1961, he flew two orbits in a Mercury capsule on the Mercury-Atlas 5 mission. Two months later Project Mercury pilot John Glenn orbited the Earth.
On 9 March 1961 the Soviet Union launched the Korabl-Sputnik 4 that carried a dog named Chernushka, some mice, and, for the first time into space, a guinea pig. All were successfully recovered.
France flew their first rat (Hector) into space on 22 February 1961, successfully recovering him on his return. Two more rats were flown in October 1962.
On 18 October 1963, France launched Félicette the cat aboard Veronique AGI sounding rocket No. 47. The launch was directed by the French Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique (CERMA). Félicette was recovered alive after a 15-minute flight and a descent by parachute. Félicette had electrodes implanted into her brain, and the recorded neural impulses were transmitted back to Earth. After two months of analysis, she was euthanized so an autopsy could be performed. On 18 December 2019 a bronze statue with the effigy of Félicette was inaugurated at the "Université internationale de l'espace" in Strasbourg, France. A second cat was sent to space by CERMA on 24 October 1963, but the flight ran into difficulties that prevented recovery. In 1967, France launched two pig-tailed macaque monkeys into suborbital space.
China launched mice and rats in 1964 and 1965, and two dogs in 1966.
During the Voskhod program, two Soviet space dogs, Veterok (Ветерок, Little Wind) and Ugolyok (Уголёк, Blackie), were launched on 22 February 1966, on board Cosmos 110 and spent 22 days in orbit before landing on 16 March. This spaceflight of record-breaking duration was not surpassed by humans until Soyuz 11 in 1971 and still stands as the longest space flight by dogs.
The US launched Biosatellite I in 1966 and Biosatellite I/II in 1967 with fruit flies, parasitic wasps, flour beetles and frog eggs, along with bacteria, amoebae, plants and fungi.
On 11 April 1967, Argentina also launched the rat Belisario, atop a Yarará rocket, from Cordoba military range, which was recovered successfully. This flight was followed by a series of subsequent flights using rats.Manfredi, Alberto N. ARGENTINA Y LA CONQUISTA DEL ESPACIO. reconquistaydefensa.org.ar It is unclear if any Argentinean biological flights passed the 100 km limit of space.
The first animals in deep space, the first to circle the Moon, and the first two tortoises in space were launched on Zond 5 on 14 September 1968 by the Soviet Union. The Horsfield's tortoises were sent on a circumlunar voyage to the Moon along with wine flies, meal worms, and other biological specimens. These were the first inhabitants of Earth to travel around the Moon. The capsule overshot its terrestrial landing site but was successfully recovered at sea on 21 September. The animals survived but underwent weight loss. More turtles followed on the circumlunar Zond 6 mission of November 1968 (ahead of the December U.S. crewed Apollo 8 mission) and four turtles flew on the circumlunar Zond 7 mission which flew around the Moon on August 11, 1969, three weeks after Apollo 11's Moon walk.L S Sutulov et al. Post-flight histological analysis of turtles aboard Zond 7 Life Sci Space Res. 1971:9:125-8. From the pubmed site, accessed 2026-07-22
On 28 June 1969, the US launched the monkey Bonny, a macaque, on Biosatellite 3 in what was intended to have been a 30-day orbit around the Earth, with the monkey being fed by food pellets from a dispenser that he had been trained to operate. Bonny's health deteriorated rapidly and he was returned to Earth on 7 July, but died the next day after the Biosatellite capsule was recovered in the Pacific Ocean."Astromonk Dies After Return" , Pittsburgh Press, 8 July 1969, p1