Scientists who prepared animals for space flight admitted for the first time what their pets were actually called
Scientists first discovered the secret of the nicknames of the famous astronaut dogs Belka and Strelka. In fact, Strelka was called Kaplya, and Belka Vilna. This revelation "descended" on the visitors of the exhibition "Belka, Strelka and Others", which opened at the Museum of Cosmonautics.
For the first time among the exposition of archival materials of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the museum displays scans of pages from the workbook of Oleg Georgievich Gazenko, one of the founders of space biology and medicine. It was in it that everyone saw the true names of the tested animals.
As the "MK" was informed in the IBMP RAS, Gazenko kept this notebook in 1960, during the preparation period, during the flight and immediately after the landing of the cosmonaut dogs. It contains all the important biological parameters of animals, the layout of the electrodes, and much more.
The scans show that the dogs Vilna and Kaplya received their "flight" names on August 13, 1960. Now the whole world knows them as Belka and Strelka.
Natalia Vedeneeva
