In October 2002, a Russian scientist named Dimitri Malashenkov stood up at a space conference in Houston and quietly explained that the dog Laika, whom the Soviet Union had publicly mourned as a heroic week-long orbiter in 1957, had actually died of heat and panic within about five hours of launch.June 5, 2026
In November 1988, an unmanned Soviet space shuttle called Buran flew a full orbital mission and landed itself in a blizzard at Baikonur without a single human input, and three years later the country that built it no longer existed. Saving Tips June 1, 2026 On the morning of November 15, 1988, a Soviet spacecraft named Buran lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan,…
