Before America could react to the first blow, the USSR did it again less than a month later. On November 3 that same year, Sputnik II was launched. This time, the object carried life with it, in the shape of a now-famous dog that answered to the name Laika.

Interestingly, Laika died a few hours after the launch from stress and overheating. A possible cause was a malfunction in the thermal control system. It would be decades before the true cause of her death was made public. Some Russian scientists later expressed regret the dog was allowed to die.

Could the thermal malfunction have occurred because Sputnik 2 was hastily put together? Apparently, thanks to an official decision to launch the satellite made on October 10 or 12, the team had a mere four weeks to design and build Sputnik 2.

Still, the world now had proof that human beings could survive in space.