Dogs in space
	On 3 November 1957 the USSR scored a world first: the rocket Sputnik 2 was launched with a dog on board. Laika (meaning Barker), the first animal to go into orbit, had been rounded up from the streets of Moscow. A mongrel with a Siberian husky heritage, she was nicknamed Muttnik by the American press. A few days into the journey Laika's life-support system ran down and she died. Sputnik 2 continued orbiting the Earth until 14 April 1958 when it re-entered the atmosphere and burned up. At least 13 other Russian dogs were launched towards orbit in the Sputnik series of satellites between 1958 and 1961. Later, in February 1966 the biosatellite Kosmos 110 was launched carrying two dogs, Veterok (Little Wind) and Ugolyok (Little Piece of Coal). The dogs were observed in orbit for 22 days via video transmission and biomedical telemetry. Theirs still stands as the canine flight record, and was not surpassed by humans until 1974. Over the years a number of animals have been flown into space for science experiments in orbit. The first primate was the chimpanzee Enos who, in 1961, flew two orbits around the Earth. Since then a number of biosatellites have been flown into orbit, testing weightlessness in different types of plants and animals. These test flights have carried white Czechoslovakian rats, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys, newts, fruit flies, fish and others. In 1990 a Japanese reporter took green tree frogs to the Mir space station.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Britain's defence chiefs were concerned with minimising the response time of the country's armed forces in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. Rocket propulsion, whether applied to aircraft, guided missiles or ballistic missiles, assisted in meeting this need, and Britain engaged in a wide-ranging series of rocketry research programmes. Rocket propulsion would also enable space flight, which had been predicted by the nineteenth-century Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. When the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 using a converted ballistic missile, it was clear that those other nations with long-range missile programmes could also, in principle, launch their own satellites. At the time, the United States and Britain were the only other nations in a position to do so.

Doug Millard discusses the origin of the Cold War (2:21 min)

Britain held back. The final decision to build the national satellite-launch vehicle called Black Arrow was not taken until 1966. By the time the Black Arrow R3 vehicle launched Prospero in 1971, four other countries had already followed the Soviet Union's example and launched their own satellites. Stranger still, R3 was to be the first and last orbital launch of a Black Arrow vehicle, because the British government had already cancelled the programme. Why did this turnaround happen?

The first satellites
The space age began on 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union used a modified intercontinental ballistic missile to launch the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Around the world, people listened in awe to the bleeps from Sputnik's radio transmitter. Those in the United States listened in anger because they had expected their country to be the first to launch a satellite. Other countries had expected the USA to be first too. One month later, the Soviet Union triumphed again, when Sputnik 2 and its crew of one--Laika the dog--were launched into space.

In December of that year, the United States' own attempt to orbit a satellite failed when the Vanguard launch vehicle, developed by the navy, exploded on its launch pad. A second attempt also failed in January 1958. The USA eventually succeeded with the Explorer 1 satellite, launched on 31 January 1958. This satellite, like those of the Soviet Union, was launched by a modified missile.

Science Museum, London/ Science & Society Picture Library

Sputnik 1 satellite (replica), c.1957. Sputnik 1 was a hollow aluminium sphere, 580mm in diameter, with four projecting radio antennas. It contained batteries and a simple transmitter.

In Britain, people's reaction to Sputnik 1 was less frenzied than in the United States. Nevertheless, within days of the satellite's launch, MPs were questioning the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan on the subject. They wanted to know whether Britain would follow the Soviet Union's example and convert its ballistic missiles into satellite launchers. Besides the US, Britain was the only other nation that could build satellite launchers at that time.