The engineers who sealed Laika into a narrow, windowless Sputnik 2 space capsule on 3 November 1957 knew it was the last time they would ever see her. Following the success of Sputnik 1 on 4 October, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had ordered a dog be flown within a month. But in the scramble to get the spacecraft ready in time, no-one had figured out how to get the animal back alive.

“This was always going to be a one-way mission,” says Doug Millard, space curator at London’s Science Museum. “It was at the height of the Cold War and this was serious stuff, part of a struggle between the superpowers.”

Once successfully in orbit, the world was told how Laika would survive a week in comfort, with plenty of food and water, before passing away painlessly. It emerged in 2002 that the dog had only lasted seven hours before dying of panic and heat exhaustion.

Still, for the Soviet Union, the mission was another propaganda coup and space dog Laika became a national hero. And, by launching a sizeable 113kg (249lb) capsule with a live animal on board, it appeared the Russians were way ahead of the Americans when it came to space and missile technology.

“You could argue that it had as big an effect as the first Sputnik,” says Millard. “It certainly compounded the impact on the United States – as it was so heavy, it confirmed the Soviets had the ability to put a nuclear warhead on a rocket and deliver it to the US.”