The Soviet Union reported that a week into orbit, she was euthanized and died painlessly. BBC news reported in 2002 that this may have been untrue. Laika almost definitely died of panic and overheating when humidity and temperature went up after lift off.
Sergei Korolev was the designer of the Sputnik, in addition to the first manned spacecraft. Korolev was from the Soviet Union, but a poor Communist and was arrested and worked hard labor for a year, but was rescued by a friend and assigned to a top-secret engineering project in Moscow. This helped pave the way for his request to build a non-military satellite to be approved on July 30, 1955. By August 1957, his spaceship was ready.
After the Sputnik’s success was transmitted back to Earth by a series of blips, the Soviets were stunned and thrilled. Unfortunately, in the United States, everyone was indeed stunned but also afraid. They worried that the USSR’s ability to launch a satellite also translated to them being able to launch a nuclear missile. This was in the middle of the cold war, and a terrifying thought, but it also made the Americans to try even harder for the success, yet subsequent failure, of their ship, the